No More Learning

[The following is the account given by Mariner: "On this island [Hoonga]
there is a peculiar cavern, which was first discovered by a young chief,
whilst diving after a turtle. The nature of this cavern will be better
understood if we imagine a hollow rock rising sixty feet or more above
the surface of the water, into the cavity of which there is no known
entrance but one, and that is on the side of the rock, as low down as
six feet under the water, into which it flows; and, consequently, the
base of the cavern may be said to be the sea itself. " Mariner seeing
some young chiefs diving into the water one after another, and not rise
again, he inquired of the last, . . . what they were about? "'Follow me,'"
said he, "'and I will take you where you have never been before. . . . '"
Mariner prepared to follow his companion, and, guided by the light
reflected from his heels, entered the opening in the rock, and rose into
the cavern. The light was sufficient, after remaining about five
minutes, to show objects with some little distinctness; . . .
Nevertheless, as it was desirable to have a stronger light, Mariner
dived out again, and, priming his pistol, tied plenty of gnatoo tight
round it, and wrapped the whole up in a plantain-leaf: he directed an
attendant to bring a torch in the same way.
Thus prepared, he re-entered
the cavern, unwrapped the gnatoo, fired it by the flash of the powder,
and lighted the torch. "The place was now illuminated tolerably well. . . .
It appeared (by guess) to be about forty feet wide in the main part, but
it branched off, on one side, in two narrower portions. The medium
height seemed also about forty feet. The roof was hung with stalactites
in a very curious way, resembling, upon a cursory view, the Gothic
arches and ornaments of an old church. " According to one of the
matabooles present, the entire family of a certain chief had, in former
times, been condemned to death for conspiring against a rival
tyrant--the chief to be taken out to sea and drowned, the rest of the
family to be massacred. One of the chiefs daughters was a beautiful
girl, to whom the youth who discovered the cave was attached. "He had
long been enamoured of this young maiden, but had never dared to make
her acquainted with the soft emotions of his heart, knowing that she was
betrothed to a chief of higher rank and greater power, but now, . . . no
time was to be lost; he flew to her abode . . .