It was useless to attempt to shut out that voice.  I stuffed a piece of bag into the ear that wasn’t jammed against the pearl shell, but the noise of that fool talking fairly sizzled in my brain.  Finally I gave up all hopes of trying to sleep till the pair had left the wharf, and I lay upon my back as they came slowly up the sun-bitten structure.

It was only when I gave up all thoughts of sleep that I recognized that the Maori was talking English.  Up to that moment I thought the pair were arguing in some unfamiliar tongue, but suddenly their conversation gripped me, and I strained my ears to listen.

“There’s the white waterfall,” chanted the Maori.

“Yes, the white waterfall,” repeated the Fijian.

“An’ you go along sixty paces.”

“To the right?” questioned the Fijian.

“No!  To the left, you fool!” screamed his companion.

“All right, you go to the left,” muttered the rebuked one.  “An’ that’s the way to heaven!” cried the Maori.

“The way to heaven,” echoed the Fijian; then the two lifted up their voices and chanted: 

  “That’s the way to heaven,
   That’s the way to heaven,
   That’s the way to heaven out
   Of Black Fernando’s hell.”

The incident stirred my curiosity.  If I had only heard the words of the chant I would not have puzzled my brain to determine their meaning, but it was the manner in which the Maori instructed his friend as to the direction in which one must walk from the white waterfall that made me interested.  I turned the words over in my mind as I watched them saunter slowly toward me.  Black Fernando’s hell and the white waterfall were places that I had never heard of.  I thought of all the missionary hymns that I had ever listened to afloat and ashore, but the lines that the pair had chanted were not familiar.

The two walked on in silence for a few minutes after they had lifted up their voices in the chant, then the Maori began to cross-question his companion concerning the information he had just given him.

“How many paces?” he asked.

“Sixty,” answered the Fijian.

“To the right, isn’t it?”

“Yes, to the right,” stammered the learner.  “You fool nigger!” screamed the instructor.  “It is to the left, pig!  Do you hear me?  You must go to the left from the white waterfall!  Oh, you blinded fool! you make me sick!  Sing it now with me!”

The Fijian, who was apparently afraid of the bully, hurried to obey the order, and I wondered as I listened.

“Sixty paces to the left,” squeaked the Fijian.

“Sixty paces to the left,” roared the Maori.  “Now together!”

  “That’s the way to heaven,
   That’s the way to heaven,
   That’s the way to heaven out
   Of——­”