Читать книгу Lolóma, or two years in cannibal-land. A story of old Fiji онлайн

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Her companions passed on, and I confronted her. She was speechless with terror. She thought at first, as I afterwards learned, that I was either the departed spirit of some ancestor who had undergone a strange metamorphosis in the other world, or else that I was a goblin of a kind that she had never before heard of. Then she recollected the fables of the Kalou vulavula or white God, she had heard the court minstrel relate, and determined in her own mind that I must belong to that species of deity.

I reassured her by making use of a few Fijian phrases I had at command, and she soon felt satisfied that my intentions were friendly. I contrived to make her understand that I was tambu, and that my presence in the woods must be kept a profound secret. I also gained enough of her good will to feel sure that we should meet again. The event justified that belief. Whenever the Princess and her companions visited the locality I managed to have a secret interview with her.

In course of time I was able to explain to her that I had been cast ashore in the recent hurricane, and had wandered into the hills after the death of my companions. All she knew of white men was that they were god-like beings who lived in a far country beyond the seas, and who voyaged in ships as large as islands. Much that she had heard on this subject from the tribal minstrel she had always regarded as an idle tale invented for the amusement of the populace.