“One day,” went on Tiura, “the chief remarked to his vahine that he was starting up the mountain to see her grandparents.  She wanted to go, too, but he said that he would just hurry along, and be back in a day or two.  Against her will he went alone.  He did come back in a day or two, and to her questions replied that he had had a delightful visit to her tupuna.  After that he got the peu, the habit, of departing for the mountains and remaining for hours daily.  The chief’s vahine became anoenoe (curious) to see what was his real reason for making these journeys every day.  So she followed him secretly.  She came to the mountain, where she saw him stop by an umu, a native oven he had evidently built before.  He took out a bamboo, the kind in which we cooked small pieces of meat, and she saw him draw out a piece of meat and heard him say ‘Maitai!  Good!’ as he ate it.  She watched him closely, and was anxious to know what meat he had cooked, for he had said nothing about it.

“When he had left, she rushed to the oven, opened the bamboo, and saw on pieces of meat the special tattoomarks of the thighs of her grandmother and grandfather.  Aue!  She was riri.  She fell to the earth and wept, and then she was angry.  She made up her mind to get even with her false tane, and to hurt him the worst way possible.  She hurried to his spring by their home in Arue, and caught his pet eel, Faaraianuu, who was sunning himself on the surface.  She slashed him with her knife of pearl shell, and baked him in an umu.  She ate his tail at once and put the remainder of the eel in a calabash.  Then she left, with the ipu in her hand, for Lake Vaihiria.”

Tiura halted his tale a minute to point out the constellation of the Scorpion, and to say, “Those stars are Pipiri Ma, the children, who lived at Mataiea long ago.  That is a strange story of their leaving their parents’ house for the sky!”

“Aue!  Tiura,” said I, “the stars are fixed, but there was the vahine with all but the tail of Faaraianuu in her ipu, walking toward this very spot.  What became of her?”

The son of Tetuanui smiled, and continued: 

“On her way she stopped to see the sorcerer, Tahu-Tahu and his vahine.  They were friends.  After a paraparau, the usual gossip of women, they asked her what she had in her calabash, and she replied, ‘Playthings.’  Then they told her her journey would be unsuccessful, but she kept on to this lake and put the remains of the eel in the water, right here where we are.  But the eel would not stay in the lake, and though time and again she threw him in, he always came out.  Finally she put him back in her ipu and returned to the house of Tahu-Tahu.  She told her misfortune, and Tahu-Tahu made passes and thrashed about with the sacred ti-leaves, and commanded her to put Faaraianuu in the lake again.  This she did, and he stayed, but even now, if you put a cocoanut in this lake at this spot, it will come out at the spring in Arue.  The eel still has power over that spring.”