Page:Ballads, Stevenson, 1890.djvu/36

 Like the sound of the cataract fall that plunges sudden and steep;

And Rahéro swayed as he stood, and his reason was still asleep.

Now the flame struck hard on the house, wind-wielded, a fracturing blow,

And the end of the roof was burst and fell on the sleepers below;

And the lofty hall, and the feast, and the prostrate bodies of folk,

Shone red in his eyes a moment, and then were swallowed of smoke.

In the mind of Rahéro clearness came; and he opened his throat;

And as when a squall comes sudden, the straining sail of a boat

Thunders aloud and bursts, so thundered the voice of the man.

—"The wind and the rain!" he shouted, the mustering word of the clan,14

And "up!" and "to arms, men of Vaiau!" But silence replied,

Or only the voice of the gusts of the fire, and nothing beside.

Rahéro stooped and groped. He handled his womankind,

But the fumes of the fire and the kava had quenched the life of their mind,

And they lay like pillars prone; and his hand encountered the boy,

And there sprang in the gloom of his soul a sudden lightning of joy.

"Him can I save!" he thought, "if I were speedy enough."

And he loosened the cloth from his loins, and swaddled the child in the stuff;

And about the strength of his neck he knotted the burden well.

There where the roof had fallen, it roared like the mouth of hell.

Thither Rahéro went, stumbling on senseless folk,

And grappled a post of the house, and began to climb in the smoke:

The last alive of Vaiau: and the son borne by the sire.

The post glowed in the grain with ulcers of eating fire, 24