Volume I Part 15 (2/2)

By , the place was open to the air, but not to view There was also a round opening on one side, only large enough, however, to admit the arm; but this aperture was partially closed fro the entrance as intricately laced to the standing part of the tent As I divided this lacing with my cutlass, there arose an outburst of voices from the Islanders And they covered their faces, as the interior was revealed to irl Her hands were drooping And, like a saint fro, fair hair A loail issued from her lips, and she trembled like a sound

There were tears on her cheek, and a rose-colored pearl on her bosom

Did I dream?--A snohite skin: blue, firmament eyes: Golconda locks For an instant spell-bound I stood; while with a slow, apprehensive atheredone step within, and partially dropping the curtain of the tent, I so stood, as to have both sight and speech of Sa in the farther corner of the retreat, holly screened froFor the soul of me, I could not link this ers She seemed of another race So powerful was this iue She started, and bending over, listened intently, as if to the first faint echo of so back her hair, the aze But her eyes soon fell, and bending over once th she slowly chanted to herself several h I knew not what they uely seemed familiar

Impatient to learn her story, I now questioned her in Polynesian But with ned , however, that without co of the words I e in their sound, I once erness to hear her history

Afterwith alararding me

Broken as these disclosures were at the time, they are here presented in the form in which they were afterward more fully narrated

So unearthly was the story, that at first I little comprehended it; and was almost persuaded that the luckless maiden was some beautiful maniac

She declared herself hts, soo of the Polynesians To this isle, while yet an infant, by some mystical power, she had been spirited from Amma, the place of her nativity

Her name was Yillah And hardly had the waters of Oroolia washed white her olive skin, and tinged her hair with gold, when one day strolling in the woodlands, she was snared in the tendrils of a vine

Drawing her into its bowers, it gently transfor her conscious soul folded up in the transparent petals

Here hung Yillah in a trance, the world without all tinged with the rosy hue of her prison At length when her spirit was about to burst forth in the opening flower, the blossom was snapped from its stem; and borne by a soft wind to the sea; where it fell into the opening valve of a shell; which in good time was cast upon the beach of the Island of Amma

In a dream, these events were revealed to Alee its pearly casket, took forth the bud, which noed signs of opening in the reviving air, and bore faint shadowy revealings, as of the dawn behind cri, the blosso a rosy ed fro Yillah as before; her locks all moist, and a rose- colored pearl on her bosom Enshrined as a Goddess, the wonderful child now tarried in the sacred temple of Apo, buried in a dell; never beheld of mortal eyes save Aleema's

Moon after one by, Aleema came to her with a dream; that the spirits in Oroolia had recalled her holed up in the sea an enchanted spring; which strea over upon the brine, flowed on between blue watery banks; and, plunging into a vortex, went round and round, descending into depths unknown Into this whirlpool Yillah was to descend in a canoe, at last to well up in an inland fountain of Oroolia

CHAPTER XLIV Away

Though clothed in language of my own, the maiden's story is in substance the sas narrated as past events; she merely recounted them as impressions of her childhood, and of her destiny yet unaccomplished And e of the strange arts of the island priesthood, and the rapt fancies indulged in by ood part of the effect it otherould have produced

For ulterior purposes connected with their sacerdotal supremacy, the priests of these climes oftentimes secretethem from all intercourse with the world, craftily delude therow up, into the wildest conceits

Thus wrought upon, their pupils alence of seraphic i inspired as oracles; and as such, they are sometimes resorted to by devotees; always screened from vieever, in the recesses of the teuiled with so the islands of Paradise, they are led to the secret sacrifice, and perish unknown to their kindred

But, would that all this had been hidden froh to be really divine; and so I ends