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By Root 4355 0

advantage, for the huge canoe was as rigid as if carved from a single log, yet it was composed of many pieces, lashed intricately together, and it was these joints that the king now inspected. They leaked, of course, and without constant bailing the canoe would sink, but they did not leak much. The strakes which formed the sides of the two hulls were also lashed on, and were also nearly watertight. The two halves of the canoe were held together, about four feet apart, by eleven stout beams that passed through the inside wall of each hull, and were again bound by powerful sennit, while to them was lashed the long, solid platform upon which the passengers and the gods would ride. This left, in each hull, a narrow space between the edge of the platform and the outer edge of the hull, where the paddlers sat on small movable seats which they shifted back and forth until they found a place amid the cargo where their feet could reach the bottom of the null.

"The canoe is fine," Teroro assured his brother, and the crowd waited in silence while the two brothers and their uncle studied the storm.

Finally Tamatoa said, "If the omens are good, we will leave tomorrow at dusk. We must be at sea when the stars rise."

When the others had gone, Tamatoa led Tupuna back to the palace and sat disconsolately upon the matting. "What have we overlooked?" he fretted.

"I saw nothing missing," the old man said.

"Have we forgotten some vital thing, Tupuna?"

"Nothing that is apparent."

"What does it mean?" the king cried in deep perplexity. "I have tried so desperately to arrange this correctly. Where have I failed?"

His uncle said quietly, "I noticed that as we inspected the goods, when we were through, each man tied his bundles up a little more tightly. At the canoe they fastened the sennit just a bit more strongly. Perhaps that is what the gods wanted us not to forget. The last effort that ensures success."

"You think it could have been that?" Tamatoa asked eagerly.

"It's been a long day," Tupuna evaded. "Let us all dream one more night, and if the omens are good, that must have been the meaning."

So on the fourth night of the storm all men who would make the voyage assembled at the temple according to ancient custom, there to acquire their last flow of mana and to sleep in terror, awaiting the omens that would lay bare the future. Once more Teroro dreamed of his canoe, and again Marama called that she was Tane and again Tehani was Ta'aroa, and just before he wakened, each woman was transformed into a mast, so that the omen was obviously hopeful. Teroro was so pleased that he risked a powerful tabu and crept out of the temple and went to the bed of Marama, lying with her for the last time and assuring her that it was only the king's command that kept him from taking her, and in the last stormy darkness, she wept. He consoled her by taking from his pouch the length of sennit that he had picked up at the temple in Havaiki, and taking Marama out into the storm, he upturned a large rock and carefully placed the sennit under it. "When I have gone for a year, turn the rock aside and you'll know whether I survived," for if the sennit still lay clean and straight, the canoe had reached land; but if it were twisted .. .

King Tamatoa woke from his dream and beat his matting with fists of joy, for incredible as it seemed, he had seen the Seven Little Eyes. He had seen them! They had actually hung over Bora Bora and moved off with the canoe. "Oh, blessed Tane!" the king cried in ecstasy. And for the rest of the night he did not sleep, but stood in the doorway of the temple surveying the storm, with the rain in his face, and in those solemn hours he knew an abiding content: "Our boat is well loaded. We have good men. My brother knows the sea and my uncle knows the chants. On this day we shall set forth."

But the dream that actually launched the voyage occurred in the hut of old Tupuna, for he saw in dream-spun heavens a rainbow standing directly in the path the canoe must take, and a worse omen than this there could not have been, but as he watched,