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lovely in the fragrance of banana blossoms, came and sat beside him, and when her feet splashed in the cool green waters, it was as if a child were playing, and soon her husband forgot his anger. Even when he stared across to the small promontory on which the local temple sat, and where the priests were dedicating the eight doomed men to Oro, he spoke� without the animal anger that had possessed him during the cere-1 monies.^
    "I'm not afraid of the convocation, Marama," he said firmly. 1
    "I am afraid for you," his wife replied.a
    "Look at our canoe!" he digressed, pointing to a long shed near the temple, under which a mammoth twin-hulled canoe rested. "You wouldn't want anyone else to guide that, would you?" he teased.
    Marama, whose priestly father had selected the sacred logs for the craft, needed no reminder of its importance, so she contented herself with pointing out: "Mato from the north can guide the canoe."
    Then Teroro divulged his real reason for attending the dangerous convocation: "My brother may need my help."
    "King Tamatoa will have many protectors," Marama replied.
    "Without me events could go badly," Teroro stubbornly insisted, and wise Marama, whose name meant the moon, all-seeing and compassionate, recognized his mood and retreated to a different argument.
    She said, "Teroro, it is you mainly that the High Priest suspects of being disloyal to his red god Oro."
    "No more than the others," Teroro growled.
    "But you're the one who shows your disbelief," she argued.
    "Sometimes I can't hide it," the young chief admitted.
    Furtively, Marama looked about to see if any spy had crept upon them, for the High Priest had his men in all places, but today there was none, and with her feet in the lagoon she resumed her careful reasoning. "You must promise me," she insisted, "that if you do go to Oro's temple, you will pray only to Oro, think only of Oro. Remember how the steersman's lips were read."
    "I've been to three convocations at Havaiki," Teroro assured her. "I know the dangers."
    "But not this special danger," his wife pleaded.*1
    "What is different?" he asked.
    Again Marama looked about her and again she saw nothing, so she spoke: "Haven't you wondered why the High Priest spent ten extra days at Havaiki?"'
    "I suppose he was preparing for the convocation."
    "No. That must have been decided many days earlier. To permit canoes from Tahiti and Moorea to return to Havaiki by tomorrow. Last year a woman from Havaiki confided to me that the priests there consider our High Priest the ablest of all, and they plan to promote him to some position of prominence."
    "I wish they would," Teroro grumbled. "Get him off this island."
    "But they wouldn't dare make him paramount priest so long as his own island is not completely won over."
    As Marama talked, her husband began to pick up a thread of importance, which often occurred when the wise moon-faced woman spoke, and he leaned forward on the log to listen. She continued: "It seems to me that the High Priest will have to do everything possible in this convocation to prove to the priests of Havaiki that he is more devoted to Oro than they."
    "In order to make himself eligible for promotion?" Teroro asked.
    "He must."
    "What do you think he will do?" Teroro asked.
    Marama hesitated to utter the words, and at that moment an unexpected wind blew across the lagoon and threw small waves at her feet. She drew her toes from the lagoon and dried them with her hands, still not speaking, so Teroro continued her thought: "You think that to impress others, the High Priest will sacrifice the king?"
    "No," Marama corrected. "It is your feet he will place upon the rainbow."
    Teroro reached up and tugged at the tip of a breadfruit leaf and asked thoughtfully, "Will the killing then stop?"
    "No," his wife replied gravely, "it will go on until all your friends have left the lagoon. Only then will Bora Bora be safe for Oro."
    "Men like Mato and Pa?"
    "They are doomed," Marama said.
    "But you