gs and felt the rough
roots of the banian under me, and I was back in the courtyard. The
spectacle of the Crucifixion was raised on a basalt platform fully
twenty feet long. The figures were of golden bronze, and the cross
was painted white. Over it hung the branches of a lofty
breadfruit-tree, a congruous canopy for such a group. The Bread of
Life, in truth.

A tablet on the cross bore the inscription:

"1900
Le Christ Dieu Homme
Vit
Regne
Commande
Christo Redemptori
Jubile 1901
Atuona."

"The _tiki_ of the true god," said Titihuti, observing my gaze, and
crossed herself with the fervor of the believer in a new charm.

On the roof a score of doves were cooing as we filed into the church.
There were bas-reliefs of cherubim and seraphim over the doorway, fat,
distorted bodies with wings a-wry, yet with a celestial vision
showing through the crude workmanship. A loop-holed buttress on
either side of the facade spoke of the days when the forethought of
the builders planned for defence in case a reaction of paganism
caused the congregation to attack the Christian fathers.

Inside the doorway a French nun in blue robes tugged at a rope
depending from the belfry, and above us the bells rang out from two
tiny towers. She looked curiously at me and my savage companion, her
pale peasant's face hard, homely, unhealthy; then she kicked at a
big dog who was trying to drink the holy water from the clam-shell
beside the door. "_Allez_, Satan!" she said.

The _benetier_, large enough to immerse an infant, was fixed to a
board, a fascinating, blackened old bracket, carved with the
instruments of torture, the nails, the spear, the scourge, and thorns.
Ivory and pearl, stained by a century or more, were inlaid. As I
dipped my hand in the shell a huge lizard that made his nest in the
hollow of the bracket ran across my knuckles.

Within, there were seats with kneeling-planks, hewed out of hard
wood and still bearing the marks of the adze. Upon them the
congregation soon assembled, the women on one side, the men on the
other. The women wore hats, native weaves in semi-sailor style,
decorated with Chinese silk shawls or bright-colored handkerchiefs.
All were barefooted except the pale and sickly daughters of Baufre,
who wore clumsy and painful shoes. Many Daughters, the little,
lovely leper, came with Flower, of the red-gold hair, the Weaver of
Mats, who had her