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  That afternoon, in torment of spirit, he sought out his brother and said simply, "I shall go back to Bora Bora."

  The king was not surprised, for he had been watching his brother and news of his rejection of Tehani had been discussed with old Tupuna, who had said that Teroro was ill in spirit. "Why will you go? Tamatoa asked.

  "I must bring Marama here," the younger man said. "We need more breadfruit, more dogs, everything. We need more people."

  A council was held and all agreed that a trip south could prove helpful, especially if foodstuffs were brought back. "But who can be spared for such a long voyage?" Tupuna asked, and Teroro replied that he could sail West Wind to Bora Bora with only six men, if Pa and Hiro were two of them.

  "I'll go," Mato insisted, but Teroro growled, "We have treated Tehani badly. You stay with her." And he would not take Mato, his greatest friend.

  So the return trip was authorized, and the community began assembling its pitiful stores of spare food. This time there was no dried taro, no coconut, no breadfruit, no bamboo lengths to carry water. There were, fortunately, some bananas, but they did not dry and carry well. Dried fish there was in plenty, and on this the men would exist.

  When the food was collected, Teroro divulged his plan. Drawing a rough pattern of the trip north, he pointed out that the canoe had sailed far east, then north, then far west. With a bold line in the sand he cut across this pattern and said, "We will sail directly south, and we will find the island."

  "There will be no storm winds to aid you," Tupuna warned.

  "We will ride with the currents," Teroro replied, "and we will paddle.

  On the last day before departure, Teroro was sitting alone when one of the village women came to him and said plaintively, "On the return, if there is room in the canoe, will you please bring one thing for me?"

  "What?" Teroro asked. "A child," the woman said. "Whose child?" he inquired.

  "Any child," the woman replied, adding softly, "It is woeful to be in a land where there are no children."

  It was impractical to bring a child so far, and Teroro said so, and dismissed the woman, but in a little while another came to him, saying, "Why should you bring pigs and breadfruit, Teroro? What our hearts ache for is children." And he sent her away.

  But the women came again, and while they did not weep, there were tears in their throats as they spoke: "We are growing older, all of us. You and the king and Tupuna and all of us. There are babies, to be sure, but we need children."

  "There are no children playing along the shore," another said. "Do you remember how they played in our lagoon?" And suddenly Teroro could see the lagoon at Bora Bora with hundreds of brown, naked children in the green waters, and he realized why Havaiki-of-the-North had seemed so barren.

  "Please," the women pleaded, "bring us back some children."

  Then, on the night of departure, for Teroro insisted upon leaving when the stars were visible, he confided to his brother: "I am not going solely for Marama. I am going to bring back the stone of Pere. I think an island should have not only men gods, but women, too."

  On the long voyage south, while his men starved and grew parched in the doldrums, Teroro put together the rough chant that would be remembered in the islands for generations after his death and which served to guide subsequent canoes from Tahiti to the new Havaiki:

  Wait for the west wind, wait for the west wind!

  Then sail to Nuku Hiva of the dark bays

  To find the constant star.

  Hold to it, hold to it,

  Though the eyes grow dim with heat.

  Hold to it, hold to it,

  Till wild Ta'aroa sends the winds.

  Then speed to the clouds where Pere waits.

  Watch for her flames, the flames of Pere,

  Till great Tane brings the land,

  Brings Havaiki-of-the-North,

  Sleeping beneath the Little Eyes.

  But when the chant was finished, Teroro realized with some dismay that finding the home islands was not going to be easy, and he missed them altogether at first, reaching all the way down to Tahiti before he discovered where he was. Then, beating his way back north, he found Havaiki-of-Red-Oro, and there at sea, in the gently rolling swells, the seven men held a council of war. Teroro posed the problem simply: "If we sail into Bora Bora without a plan, the High Priest, who must know about our attack on Oro, will command his men to kill us."

  "We've got to risk it," Pa growled.

  "We are very weak," Teroro pointed out.

  "We can still fight," Pa insisted.

  "There is a better way," Teroro argued, and with a newly developing sense of guile he reasoned: "Since we're not strong enough to fight the High Priest, we must outsmart him." And he suggested a way, but his men thought of other things when in the dawn they saw once more the pinnacles of Bora Bora and the wild cliffs dropping away to the lagoon.

  Pa muttered, "We must have been insane to leave this place for Havaiki-of-the-North." And each man in the canoe acknowledged the fact that he had surrendered earth's paradise in exchange for a harsh new land.

  As soon as Wait-for-the-West-Wind was spotted standing off the western entrance into the lagoon, the residents of its home port began to line the shores and shout with joy at the return of their people. It was this joy that Teroro counted upon to give him ten minutes' respite to develop his plan, because he believed that the islanders' spontaneous acceptance of the canoe would prevent the High Priest from ordering the crew's immediate death, and in that interval Teroro would have time to accomplish his mission.

  As the canoe neared land he warned his men again: "I'll talk, but you must look pious."

  And promptly the bow of the canoe struck land, he leaped ashore and cried, "We seek the High Priest!" and when that dignitary, older and more solemn, with flecks of white in his beard, approached, Teroro made deep obeisance and cried for all to hear, We come as servants of Oro, seeking another god for our distant land. Bless us, august one, and send us another god."

  The plea took the High Priest so by surprise, coming as it did even before any narration of the journey, that he was unable to mask his pleasure, and the staff with which he could have directed the sacrifice of the crew remained rooted in the ground, and he listened as Teroro spoke rapidly: "Under Oro we have prospered, august one, and our community grows. But life is difficult and we live scattered. That is why your servant old Tupuna requires additional gods. When we have borrowed them from you, we will depart."

  The High Priest listened, and then stood aside as the new king of Bora Bora appeared, and Teroro saw with intense pleasure that the man was not from "Havaiki, as planned, but from Bora Bora. "King," he cried, "forgive us for our midnight assault on Havaiki before our departure. We did this thing not to dishonor great Oro, but to prevent a Havaiki man from becoming king of Bora Bora. Forgive us." And Teroro was so weak, and so urgently in need of food and help, that he kneeled in the dust, and prostrated himself before the king, and then before the High Priest, and to his deep satisfaction he heard from the canoe the pious voice of Pa intoning: "Now let us go to the temple of Oro and give thanks for our safe voyage." But as the men marched, Teroro caught sight of a woman at the edge of the crowd, a tall, solemn, patient woman with a face like a moon, and he thought no more of gods or kings or priests, for the woman was Marama, and solely by looking at each other, intently and with the love that consumes two thousand miles of ocean, she knew that he had come to take her with him, and while he prayed to a god whom he detested, she went to her grass house and started packing.

  When the prayers were over he joined her there, and they sat in silence, profound communion passing between them, and she was both forgiving and consoling in the disappointing moments when they found him too exhausted with famine even to make love with her. She laughed softly and said, from the edge of the house, "See what happened on the last night we made love." And she took from a maid's arms a boy nearly a year old, with wide eyes and dark hair like his fa
ther's.

  Tororo looked at his son, and at the wife he had left behind because she could bear no children, and in his embarrassment he began to laugh. Marama laughed too, and teased: "You looked so ridiculous out there, praying to Oro. And Pa putting on that long face! 'Now let us go to the temple of Oro!' It was a good idea, Teroro, but it wasn't necessary."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Haven't you noticed how much older the High Priest looks? He has been very badly treated."

  "That's good news. How?"

  "After all his scheming to banish you and Tamatoa, so that he could become the chief priest at Havaiki ..."

  "You mean, they were just using him? To subdue Bora Bora?"

  "Yes. They had no intention of making him chief priest. After you killed your wife's father . . ."

  "She's not my wife. I gave her to Mato."

  Marama paused for a moment and looked at the floor. Quietly, she added, "The men of Havaiki tried to give us a new king, but we fought."

  "Then why do you keep the High Priest?"

  "We need a priest," she said simply. "Every island needs a priest." And they fell silent, listening to the soft waves of the lagoon, and after a long while Teroro said, "You must find a dozen women who will go with us. It's a hard journey." Then he added, "And this time we'll take some children with us." His voice brightened. "We'll take the little fellow."

  "No," Marama said. "He's too young. We'll trade him for an older boy," and in the island tradition she went from house to house, until she found an eight-year-old boy she liked, and to his willing mother she gave her son. When Teroro saw the new boy, he liked him too, and after the child was sent away to wait for the canoe's departure, he took his wife in his arms and whispered, "You are the canoe of my life, Marama. In you I make my voyage."

  At the consecration of the new idol of Oro, the High Priest insisted upon killing a slave, and Teroro hid his face in shame, for he and his men knew that once the reef was breasted, the idol would pitch into the sea, so that when the High Priest delivered the god to the becoming-priest Teroro, the latter took it gravely, not as an idol but as a symbol of the needless death of a man; and whether he or the crew liked the statue or not, it had somehow become a thing of sanctification, and Teroro treated it as such, for it spoke to him of blood. At the same time it reminded him of the difficulty which now faced him: he had to get the red-rock statue of the goddess Pere from the temple without exciting the High Priest's suspicion that that had been the real reason for the return. In secrecy he held council with Pa and Hiro to canvass the ways by which Pere might be kidnaped.

  Pa suggested: "You fooled the priests with your talk of Oro. Fool them again."

  "No," Teroro replied. "We were able to fool them about Oro because they wanted to believe. To mention a forgotten goddess like Pere would arouse their suspicions."

  "Could we steal it?" Hiro proposed.

  "Who knows where it is?" Teroro countered. They discussed other possibilities and agreed upon only one thing: to return to Havaiki-of-the-North without Pere would be insane, for since she had warned them once with such a distastrous wall of fire, the next time she would obliterate them altogether. It was then that Teroro proposed: "I shall talk with Marama. She is a very wise woman."

  And it was Marama who devised the plan. "The island knows that you have come back for me," she pointed out, "and they recall that my ancestors were priests. When the women for our voyage have been gathered, two of us will go to the High Priest and tell him that we want to take one of the ancient Bora Bora gods with us."

  "Will he allow it?" Teroro asked suspiciously.

  "He is a priest of Oro," Marama pointed out, "but he is also a Bora Boran, and he will understand our love of this island."

  It worked exactly as she planned, but when the time came for delivering the feather-draped red rock of Pere, the High Priest could not bring himself to place such treasure in the hands of a woman, insisting upon transferring the goddess directly to Teroro, and when the latter at last had the soul of Pere in his possession, the wild, passionate soul of the fire goddess, the mother of volcanoes, he wanted to shout in triumph, but instead he laid it aside as if it were only a woman's god, a whim of his wife's, and the High Priest thought the same.

  The men were fattened and the food was packed. Twelve women were selected and put on starvation diets to prepare them for the voyage. King Tamatoa's favorite wife was included, for everyone agreed that since their king had produced with his sister a royal heir of greatest sanctity, he should be encouraged to import at least one woman he loved. For seed crops the crew emphasized pigs, bananas and breadfruit. "How we yearn for sweet breadfruit," they explained.

  When all was ready, Terroro was startled to see Marama lugging toward the canoe a large bundle wrapped in leaves. "What’s that?" he cried.

  "Flowers," his wife replied.

  "What do we want with flowers?" Teroro protested.

  "I asked Pa and he said there were no flowers." Teroro looked at the other crew members, and they realized for the first time that Havaiki-of-the-North owned no natural blooms. Even so, the bundle seemed excessively large.

  "You simply can't take that much, Marama," he protested.

  "The gods like flowers," she replied. "Throw out one of the pigs."

  The idea was so offensive that the crew would not consider it, but they did compromise on this: they would put back one of the smaller breadfruit, but they all considered Teroro's woman demented.

  Then came the task, most joyous and exciting of all, of selecting the children. The men wanted to take only girls, while the women wished only boys, so that the compromise of half and half pleased no one but did have certain sense to commend it. The ten children selected ranged from four years old to twelve: dark-haired, deep-eyed, grinning, white-toothed children. Their very presence made the canoe lighter.

  But when all had stepped aboard, Teroro was unaccountably depressed by the gravity or the task he had undertaken, and this time with no guile he went gravely to the High Priest and pleaded: "Bless our journey. Establish the tabus." And the High Priest arranged the gods on the side of the voyagers and cried in a high voice, touching the food for the animals, "This is tabul This is tabu!" And when he had finished, the canoe somehow seemed safer, and it set forth for the long voyage north.

  It had barely escaped from the lagoon when Pa, the shark-faced, went for the offensive statue of Oro, to throw it into the deep, but to his surprise Teroro restrained him and said, "It is a god! We will place it reverently on the shore of Havaiki-of-Red-Oro," and when he had led the canoe to that once-hated island, slipping ashore where no lookouts could intercept him, he placed Oro in a sheltered position among rocks, and built a palm-leaf canopy; and he was overcome with the awareness that never again would he see Havaiki, from which he had sprung, and while the canoe waited, he stood on the shore of the ancestral island and chanted the story of the brave, lost people of Havaiki-in-Asia, who had set out upon innumerable voyages, never to return. This was his land, his home, and he would know it no more.

  Pa and his rugged crew were further surprised when it came time to set the course back to Havaiki-of-the-North. This time Teroro would not permit them to follow his earlier reckless path far out to sea; he required them to take the cautious route to Nuku Hiva, where in all prudence they replenished their stores, so that in the heartbreaking doldrums they had adequate food and water, especially for the children, who suffered intensely in the heat, for try as they might, they could not make their stomachs into tight hard knots. They were hungry and they said so.

  At last the stars of the Little Eyes were overhead, and the canoe turned joyously westward before the wind. Now Teroro conducted daily lessons for every man and boy aboard the canoe: "You know the island lies ahead. What signals will prove the fact?" And every male above the age of six became a navigator, and Marama, taking the place of old red-eyed Teura, became the seer, collecting omens; and one day a boy spotted a black fork-tailed bird attacking a g
annet, who had caught a fish; and Teroro showed all how to read the wave echoes as they bounced back from unseen Havaiki; but the most solemn moment came when Marama, reading her clouds, saw fire upon them, and she knew that the goddess Pere had lighted a beacon for her voyagers, and it was to this cloud of fire that Teroro directed his canoe.

  As the craft neared shore Teroro faced one last odious job, but he discharged it. Moving among the men and women he told each: "The children are no longer yours. They must be shared with those on shore, and each child shall have many mothers."

  Immediately a wailing set up, for on the long voyage men and women in the canoe had grown inordinately attached to the children, and the wild young things had found mothers and fathers whom they liked. "He is more than my son!" a woman cried, holding to her breast a nine-year-old boy with a broken tooth.

  "No," Teroro said firmly. "If it had not been for the women on shore, pleading for children, I would not have thought to bring any. They must have their share. It is only just."

  So when the canoe landed, there was a moment of intense anguish as the women from shore, too long without the sound of children, hurried down and saw the boys standing awkwardly by the mast and the little girls holding onto men's hands. The women on shore could not see the new pigs or the promising breadfruit or the bananas. All they could see were the children, and when the first child stepped ashore, a woman ran frenziedly to him with food, but the child drew back.

  It was in this manner that Teroro, bearing in his hands the rock of Pere, stepped ashore to become the compassionate and judicious priest of Havaiki, with his gentle wife Marama as associate and seer, and with the volcano goddess as his special mentor. The pigs and the breadfruit and the children increased. Marama's flowers burst into brilliance. And the island prospered.

  III

  From the Farm of Bitterness

  A THOUSAND YEARS after the men of Bora Bora had completed their long voyage to the north, a thin, sallow-faced youth with stringy blond hair left an impoverished-looking farm near the village of Marlboro, in eastern Massachusetts, and enrolled as a freshman at YaleCollege in Connecticut. This was the more mysterious for two reasons: to look at the farm one would never suppose that its owners could afford to send any of their ten children to college; and, having decided to do so, the parents must have had deeply personal reasons for sending a son not to Harvard, which was only twenty-five miles away, but to Yale, which was more than a hundred miles to the south.