and hearths, to run after her on the seashore. All were crazy with love, but, if one of them approached her, the Gulf thundered hoarsely and the storm-bird flew screaming across the sky.
Starei sang like the Mexican zenzontl, and her song soothed like the seabreeze which kisses the palms in hot evenings, and in laughing she opened her red lips like the wings of the ipiri and her bosom rose and let fall in enticing folds, the fine web of cotton that covered it. Men on seeing her wept, kneeling, and women wept also, seeing their palm huts deserted and their beds of rushes chilled and untouched.
One stormy night, the divine Starei returned to the village, after one of her rambles on the shore, in which she passed hours watching the waves, as if waiting for something; those who followed her determined to heap high their dead and bury them; the aged who had died from weariness in the pursuit of the Gulf’s daughter, the youths who had thrown their hearts at her feet, the mothers who had died of grief and the wives who had died of despair.