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By Root 4032 0

they have swallowed their humiliation and remained on Bora Bora; this they would not do. It is true that they fled into the dusk, but each man carried as his most prized possession his own personal god of courage. For Teroro it was the mighty albatross that winged its way over distant seas. For King Tamatoa it was the wind that spoke to him in tempests. For Tupuna it was the spirit of the lagoon that brought fish. And for his ancient bleary-eyed wife, Teura, the keeper of omens, it was a god so powerful that she scarcely dared mention its name. But it followed her in the ocean, her great and sweet and powerful deity, her courage in the unknown.

When they had reached, more swiftly than ever before, a point off the north coast of Havaiki, Teroro crawled over to where Mato paddled and said, "I am going to speak with the king about our feeling. Promise me that you will support me."

"I promise," Mato said.

"Even if it means death?"

"Even then."

Precariously, Teroro made his way aft to consult with his brother, laying bare a wish that startled the king: "I cannot sail with Oro in this canoe. Let us throw him into the ocean."

"A god!"

"I cannot sail with him."

Tamatoa summoned old Tupuna, who struggled aft with difficulty and sat with the brothers. "Teroro wants to throw Oro into the ocean," Tamatoa explained.

The thought was even more repulsive to the old man than it had been to the king, and he warned in powerful voice that such a thing had never been done. But Teroro was adamant: "We have suffered enough from Oro. My men cannot sail this canoe with such a burden."

"If we were on land . . ." Tupuna protested.

"No!" the king said firmly. "It is impossible."

But Teroro would not surrender. He shouted forward for Mato, who soon appeared. Tamatoa was grave and said, "Teroro wants to throw the god Oro into the ocean.

"It must not be done!" Tupuna warned.

"Let Mato speak!" Teroro demanded.

"Teroro is right," the stocky warrior said. "We have known only terror from this red god, deep, humiliating terror."

"But he is a god!" Tupuna protested.

"We must not carry such poison to a new land," Mato insisted.

Tupuna warned: "If you do such a thing, the winds will tear this canoe apart. The ocean will open to its depth and swallow us. Seaweed will grow in our hair."

"I would rather be dead," Mato shouted back, "than to install Oro in a new land."

At this point Teroro faced Tupuna and cried, "You say Oro will punish us? I say this to Oro." And he flung his head back, howling into the wind, "Oro, by your sacred pig, by your length of banana shoot, by the bodies of all men sacrificed to you, I condemn you and declare you nothing. I curse you and revile you and cast excrement in your face. Now strike me down. If you control the storm, raise your bloodstained hands and strike me down."

He stood motionless as the others listened in horror, waiting. When nothing happened he fell to his knees and whispered, just loud enough for the others to hear, "But, gentle Tane, if you guide this canoe, and powerful Ta'aroa, if you control this storm, forgive me for what I have just said. Forgive me especially for what I am about to do. But I cannot go forward with Oro as a passenger in this canoe."

He rose like a man in a dream, bowed low to his brother, and made dutiful obeisance to the priest. "Forgive me," he said in a choking voice. "If in the next moment we are swept to death, forgive me." He stumbled forward in the storm, but when he reached the gods' house itself he was powerless to open the rain-sodden door. Inherited fear of gods, plus what he remembered of his early training when it was hoped he would become a priest, rendered him incapable of action and he returned to the rear. "I cannot act without your approval, brother," he confessed. "You are my king."

Tamatoa cried, "We shall be lost if we destroy a god."

Teroro fell on the platform and clutched his brother's feet. "Command me to destroy this evil thing."

"Don't do it, Tamatoa!" his uncle warned. In this moment of indecision, when the ultimate values of the canoe were laid