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brought him into the safety of the lagoon.
    "And this one shall be first!" he screamed.
    "No! No!" the steersman pleaded, falling to his knees on the sand.
    Implacably, the great gaunt priest towered over him, pointing at
    FROM THE SUN-SWEPT LAGOON19
    him with the staff. "When the seas were upon us," he intoned mournfully, "this one prayed not to Oro for salvation but to Tane."
    "Oh, no" the sailor pleaded.
    "I watched his lips," the priest said with awful finality. Attendants from the temple gathered up the quaking steersman and hauled him off, for his legs, surrendering to terror, could not be forced to work.
    "And you!" the dreadful voice cried again, thrusting his staff at an unsuspecting watcher. "In the temple of Oro, on the holy day, your head nodded. You shall be second." Once more the attendants closed in on the culprit, dragging him away, but gently lest Oro be offered as a human sacrifice a man who was bruised or in any way imperfect.
    Solemnly the High Priest withdrew and King Tamatoa was left with the miserable task of nominating the six additional human sacrifices. He asked, "Where is my aide?" and from a spot toward the rear of the crowd, where he had hoped to remain unnoticed, the tall and trembling courtier stepped forth.
    "Why was I late in greeting the sacred one?" the king demanded.
    "The lookout stumbled. It was he who was tardy," the aide explained.
    From the rear of the crowd a woman's voice inadvertently blurted, "No, that is not true!" But the woman's husband, a small man of no marked intelligence, was dragged before the king, where he shook like a torn banana leaf, and the king surveyed him with disgust. "He shall be third," the king commanded.
    "Oh, please no!" the lookout protested. "I ran true. But when I reached the palace," and he pointed to the aide, "he was asleep."
    The king recalled his earlier impatience with the young courtier and announced peremptorily: "He shall be fourth. The rest shall be taken from the slaves." With this he strode back to the palace, while the lookout and the tall courtier, already pinioned by the priests, stood in limp amazement, appalled by the catastrophe in which each had so accidentally involved the other.
    As the frightened crowd dispersed, each congratulating himself that for this convocation he had escaped the insatiable hunger of Oro, a young chief clothed in golden tapa, which indicated that he was of the royal family, stood bitter and silent in the shade of a breadfruit tree. He had not hidden himself through fear, for he was taller than most, better muscled than any, and marked by a lean, insolent courage that no man could mistake. He had remained apart because he hated the High Priest, despised the new god Oro, and was revolted by the incessant demand for human sacrifice.
    The High Priest, of course, had immediately detected the young chief's absence from the welcoming throng, a breach of conformity which so enraged him that during the most solemn part of the ceremony his penetrating gaze had flashed this way and that, searching for the young man. Finally the priest had found him, lounging insolently under the breadfruit tree, and the two men had exchanged long, defiant stares that had been broken only when a golden-skinned
    young woman with flowing hair that held banana blossoms tugged at her husband's arm, forcing him to drop his eyes.
    Now, with the ceremony ended, the stately wife was pleading: "Teroro, you must not go to the convocation."
    "Who else can command our canoe?" he asked impatiently.
    "Is a canoe so important?"
    Her husband looked at her in amazement. "Important? What could there be more important?"
    "Your life," she said simply. "Wise navigators do not sail when the clouds are ominous."
    He dismissed her fears and strode disconsolately to a fallen log that projected into the lagoon. Falling angrily upon it, he dipped his brown feet into the silvery waters, and kicked them viciously as if he hated even the sea; but soon his placid wife,