And the drumbeat, bringing it back, ran like a fever pulse in a man's
blood.
In the center of the sward, her back to the musicians, a solitary female
danced; a Kanaka woman, clothed in a single shift of the sheerest
crimson cotton, tied at one shoulder and falling to mid-thigh. Not from
Taai did this woman come; one saw that; not from any near island or
group. Her beauty was extraordinary, like that of the Marquesans, with
that peculiar straightness of all the lines, at once Grecian, austere,
and incalculably voluptuous.--
The dance, as I saw it for the first time that night, I will not speak
of. I have traded to many islands in many groups--even the Low
Archipelago--but the island where that dance was indigenous I am sure
I've never touched. Compared with any of the _hulas_, set and fixed in
each locality as the rites of Rome, it was sophisticated; it gave an
illusion of continuous invention and spontaneity; it was flesh swept by
a wind and shattered; it ravished the eyes.
I don't know how long I watched; how long all the immortal flame in me
lent itself to the histrionic purposes of that woman. But I shall never
forget it. Never! Never!
I looked away. I saw two faces. One of them hung over my shoulder. It
was the trader's. It was the face of a man who has lived a very long
while wielding power of life and death over unsatisfying satisfactions.
Pages:
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528