Ta'aroa

His assistant priests breathed deeply with excitement, for their struggle to implant their new god on the backs of Tane and Ta'aroa had not been easy, and for several months they had longed for some positive event of magnitude to assure them that they had won.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

On the seventeenth day one of the women died, and as her body was plunged into the perpetual care of Ta'aroa, god of the mysterious deep, the men who were to have been her husbands wept, and through the entire canoe there was a longing for ram and the cool valleys of Bora Bora, and it was not surprising that many began to deplore having come upon this voyage.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

In a small grass hut erected on the platform just abaft the masts, he placed Tane toward the right mast and Ta'aroa toward the left.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

He adjusted the king's feather cape, handed Teroro a spear, and lifted into his own shaking hands the two gods, Tane and Ta'aroa.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

"But Ta'aroa sent his bird to us in the storm, didn't he?"

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

With a song crying from its sail, with vigor to match that of the young chiefs who manned it, the swift canoe shot into the combers, lost its nose in a great gray-blue wave, then rose triumphantly onto the crest and sped away into the very center of the wind and the rousing waves and vast blue sea of Ta'aroa.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

He went directly to the altar and took down the final precious essentials for the journey: one stone was black and white with flecks of yellow, and round, the size of a fist-it was Tane; the other stone was long and thin and greenish-it was Ta'aroa, god of the oceans on whom they must now depend.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

So for two more nights, the sixth and seventh of the voyage, the canoe sped on, safe in the mighty arms of Ta'aroa, and in those somber, critical days, all eyes were kept on the left mast, for it was obvious that not the man Teroro but the god Ta'aroa was in command of this canoe.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

_ The astronomers whistled, for this was a most propitious omen, since it confirmed the leftness of the bird's intentions and its peculiar inclination toward the mast of Ta'aroa.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959

The creatures of Ta'aroa had come to celebrate the deliverance of this canoe from the storm, but before Teura could alert her companions to this fine intelligence, an event of transcendent importance occurred.

Hawaii Michener, James 1959