Crossword-Solution: TAMANU 6 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 8

Right beside the thatch-covered dwelling of Macy O'Shea, now a man of might, there towers a stately TAMANU tree; and, as the first faint murmur of women's voices arises from the native huts, there is a responsive twittering and cooing in the thickly-leaved branches, and further back in the forest the heavy, booming note of the red-crested pigeon sounds forth like the beat of a muffled drum.

There were ornaments of old men’s beards, arranged in little sennit-bound tufts, crinkled and yellowish white; beaked clubs of ironwood, elegantly carved and smooth with countless oilings; ear pendants cut in delicate filigree from the teeth of sperm whales; grotesque little wooden gods, monstrous and bizarre; ceremonial food bowls of _Tamanu_, adorned with the rich and graceful designs of a culture now forever gone.

There were ornaments of old men's beards, arranged in little sennit-bound tufts, crinkled and yellowish white; beaked clubs of ironwood, elegantly carved and smooth with countless oilings; ear pendants cut in delicate filigree from the teeth of sperm whales; grotesque little wooden gods, monstrous and bizarre; ceremonial food bowls of _Tamanu_, adorned with the rich and graceful designs of a culture now forever gone.

Such was O Le Tao’s story of the goddess Pafuto, as told me while the Samoan night doves moaned musically in the tamanu trees.

For the island nightingale still sang its passionate song in the breadfruit, as the same aged tamanu trees sighed in their glory by the sea.