Page:Williams and Calvert, Fiji and the Fijians, New York, 1860.djvu/184

154: FIJI AND. THE FIJIANS. grave ; and their gloomy aspect made me doubt the King's sincerity, so that we resolved to stay. While waiting in the midst of these mur derers and their victims, and lost in sad thoughts of the tyranny exer- cised by the devil over those who were so entirely under his control, our reverie was disturbed by the long, dull blast of two conch shells blown by priests standing outside. It was as the passing bell, an- nouncing the demise of the old King. After several blasts, Ratu Lewe- ni-lovo turned towards the King elect, and greeted him : " Peace, Sir," — a congratulation to which his false heart gave the lie. The chief priest, as the voice of the people, then repeated the salutation : " Peace, Sir. Sit in peace. Sir. True, the sun of one King has set, but our King yet lives. Peace, Sir ; there are none here evil-minded." Tuikilakila made no reply, but sat with his head bent down to his breast. After a few moments of silence he spoke. Gazing on the corpse of his father's faithful attendant, he exclaimed, "Alas! Moalevu!" Several others having repeated the exclamation, he added, " There lies a woman truly wearied : not only in the day, but in the night also, the fire consumed the fuel gathered by her hands. If we awoke in the still night, the sound of her feet reached our ears ; and, if spoken to harshly, she con- tinued to labour only. Moalevu ! Alas ! Moalevu ! " A priest con- tinued the lament : " We used not to hear Moalevu called twice." Sim- ilar remarks, with others on the recent struggles of the dead women, the skill of the stranglers, the quantity of cloth on which the corpses lay, and the premonitory symptoms of the old King's decease, occupied the remainder of the time. Preparations being made for removing the bodies, we, having no further cause for staying, retired from " the large house." In doing so, I noticed an interesting female, oiled and dressed in a new liku, carry- ing a long bamboo, the top of which contained about a pint of water, which, as the bodies were carried out at one door, she poured on the threshold of another, and then retired by the way she came. The words of the widow of Tekoah were thus brought, with peculiar force, to my mind : " For we must needs die, and are as water spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again." My inquiry into the origin and meaning of this act resulted in nothing satisfactory. Neither could I learn why the side of the house was broken down, to make a passage for the aged King to be carried through, when there were sufficient doorways close at hand. The bodies of the strangled women, having been secured in mats, were carried on biers to the sea-side. They were placed one on either end of a canoe, with the old King on the front deck attended by the Queen and the ^lata, who with a fan kept the in-