"Well, you wait here," ordered Holman. "We're going back, but we'll
return in a few hours and pick you up. Don't move from this ledge."
Kaipi would promise anything if he was not forced to witness the
performance, and we left him huddled up in the darkness, and returned to
the spyhole in the wall.
The "tivo," as the Fijian called it, was still in progress. Without
noise, the six half-nude figures were describing circles upon the smooth
floor. The silence and the serpentlike motions had a peculiar hypnotic
effect upon us, and in a sort of dreamlike trance we watched them
wriggle by the narrow aperture to which we pressed our faces. With each
circle more of the brown, sweat-polished bodies showed beneath the
twisted mats. The pace was beginning to tell upon them now. Slower and
slower they moved past the crevice, till at last all movement ceased,
and, apparently lifeless, they lay face downward upon the floor.
I thought of the two girls at the lonely camp as we sat watching, and I
knew well that Holman's thoughts were turned in the same direction. We
had seen nothing of Leith, but an intuition that would not be put aside
connected Leith with the strange ceremony that was in progress within
the cavern, and we were chained to the spot.
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