_pareu_, all of finest tree-cloth, for in those
days before the whites came our people were properly clothed. All
naked then in the sunlight, she lifted her arms toward the sky and
laughed, and sat down on a rock to bathe her feet.

"Suddenly the lustful warriors sprang upon her, and stopping her
cries with her own _pae_ they swam with her into this cave. Thought
and breath had left her; she lay as one dead, and before they had
attained their will they heard a sound of one approaching and singing
on the rocks. They had no time to kill her, as they had intended,
that she might not bring death to them. They left her and fled along
the cliffs, barely escaping before the other man came.

"He had seen from the corner of his eye a sight of some one fleeing
from the cave. He was curious, and swam to it. It was late in the day,
for the priestess had come for the evening bath. The sun had hidden
himself behind Temetiu and the cave was dark. The man came, then,
stepping with care, and his feet found in the darkness a living body,
warm and soft and perfumed with flowers.

"Then in the darkness, finding her very sweet, he yielded to the
demon. But when he brought her at last through the falling water to
the evening light, he cried aloud. He was the _moa_, the servant of
the high priest, and this was his sister whom he loved.

"He screamed thrice, so that all the valley heard him, and then he
flung her into the pool to drown. The people saw him fleeing to the
heights. He never returned to them. He became a _moke_, a sorcerer,
who lived alone in the forest, dreaded by all. He was heard
shrieking in the night, and then the storms came. His eyes were seen
through the leaves on jungle trails, and he who saw died.

"Then the people gave the cave a name, the name of _Enamoa_, Behold
the Servant of the Priest. It was much larger then than now, as
large as a grove. But one night the people heard the noise of the
falling of great rocks, and in the morning the cave was small as now.
The _moke_ was never seen again. He had brought down the walls of
the cave upon himself, because it had seen his sin."

Malicious Gossip, having finished her tale, slipped again beneath
the green curtain of the waterfall. When I had fought through the
blinding, crashing waters and floated with aching lungs on the
surface of the pool, she was donning her tunic on the rocks above it,
and soon, with our clothes over our wet bodies, we strolled back to
Atuona,