Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/459

Rh devised plans of escape. And not without success did he plot the discomfiture of Jiji and Fainga'a, for once, seeing them approach to take him off, he proposed that he carry them. The offer was accepted, and the two goddesses got each into a basket which Bajikole slung on a pole across his shoulders, with strict injunctions to his passengers on no account to look down, but to keep their gaze fixed steadily on the sky. So he bore them off, up the mountain Holohibebe, where he hung up pole, baskets, and goddesses upon a buko tree. Bajikole then stole quietly away, and Jiji and Fainga'a, gazing ever at the sky and seeing there the movement of the clouds, were unaware that they themselves were stationary.

And so they remained for two whole years, but at the end of that time the baskets rotted, and the goddesses fell. Now, it happened just at this time that Bajikole's curiosity was aroused to learn the end of this episode of divinities in baskets. After admonitions from his wife to walk warily in his dealings with visitants from the other world, he set out for the mountain, and as he reached it met his contemned admirers coming down the slope. Unabashed, he expressed regret that for so long he had neglected his obligations to them, and, further, invited them to accompany him on a fishing expedition and see his prowess as an angler. But the crafty mortal had already devised another plot against his heavenly lovers. When the time came round for the fishing trip, he took with him a large basket made of cocoa-nut roots, wherein he had placed sweet-smelling wreaths and chaplets, such as the natives love to adorn themselves with. Thus prepared, he set out with the love-lorn maids. Bajikole sat in the stern to manage the boat, but Jiji and Fainga'a he placed in the bow, bidding them keep their eyes forward, and on no consideration to look round until he called them. When they had got well out to sea he dived over the stern, and, keeping up a great splashing the while, he invested himself with the ornaments and wreaths with which he had come prepared. Clambering back on board, he called his fair passengers to look round. Great was their astonishment at the transformation. To their inquiries Bajikole replied that festival was being held at the bottom of the sea, with all the customary sports and wealth of flowers, and that if Jiji and Fainga'a desired