"To the pole," she said.
I had seen the pole. It was not unlike the one to which I had been bound earlier in the day. There was a circular clearing amidst the feasters, of some forty feet in diameter, about which their circles formed. The pole, barkless, narrow, upright, thrust deep in the rence of the island, stood at the very center of the clearing, surrounded by the circles of the feasting rencers.
I went to the pole, and stood by it.
She took my hands and, with marsh vine, lashed them behind it. Then, as she had in the morning, she fastened my ankles to the pole, and then, again as she had in the morning, she bound me to it as well by the stomach and neck. Then, throwing away the garland of rence flowers I had worn, she replaced it with a fresh garland.
While she was doing this the rencers were clapping their hands in time and singing.
She stood back, laughing.
I saw, in the crowd, Ho-Hak, clapping his hands and singing, and the others, and he who had worn the headband of the pearls of the Vosk sorp, who had been unable to bend the bow.
Then, suddenly, the crowd stopped clapping and singing.
There was silence.
Then there came a drumming sound, growing louder and louder, a man pounding on a hollow drum of rence root with two sticks, and then, as suddenly as the singing and clapping, the drum, too, stopped.
And then to my astonishment the rence girls, squealing and laughing, some protesting and being pushed and shoved rose to their feet and entered the clearing in the circle.
The young men shouted with pleasure.
One or two of the girls, giggling, tried to slip away, fleeing, but young men, laughing, caught them, and hurled them into the clearing of the circle.
Then the rence girls, vital, eyes shining, breathing deeply, barefoot, bare-armed, many with beads worn for festival, and hammered copper bracelets and armlets, stood all within the circle.
The young men shouted and clapped their hands.
I saw that more than one fellow, handsome, strong-faced could not take his eyes from Telima.
She was, I noted, the only girl in the circle who wore an armlet of gold.
She paid the young men, if she noticed them, no attention.
The rence communities tend to be isolated. Young people seldom see one another, saving those from the same tiny community. I remembered the two lines, one of young men, the other of girls, jeering and laughing, and crying out at one another in the morning.
Then the man with the drum of hollow rence root began to drum, and I heard some others join in with reed flutes, and one fellow had bits of metal, strung on a circular wire, and another a notched stick, played by scraping it with a flat spoon of rence root.
