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“Ahé!” he exclaimed under his breath. “A man of my own race, and from a land where the pearl-oyster grows!”

He gazed at it for some time, then replaced the heavy slab carefully and descended from the marae. Religion entered into every act of a Polynesian’s life, and save in time of war they held the dead and the beliefs of others in deep respect. The bones would lie in peace, and no stone of the old temple would be employed to build the new.

Minarii chose another site that lay a stone’s throw distant, and measured off a square six fathoms each way. There was a plentiful supply of boulders in the ravine below. Here the leisurely task began, all six of the natives working at it whenever they had an hour to spare. Little by little the temple of Ta’aroa took form—a rocky platform set with kneeling stones and surrounding a small pyramid three yards high, made sacred by the two stones brought from the ancestral temple at Tahiti. The clearing was shaded by majestic trees, and a neat fence enclosed the whole, bordered with a hedge of flowering shrubs.