There was the slightest chill in the air, unusual there, so that I put on shirt and trousers of thin silk and tennis shoes for my walk, and with a lantern set out for the tii.  Along the road were my neighbors, the whole village streaming toward the goblin wood.  Mahine and Maraa, two girls of my acquaintance, unmarried and the merriest in Tautira, joined me.  They adorned me with a wreath of ferns and luminous, flower-shaped fungus from the trees, living plants, the taria iore, or rat’s-ear, which shone like haloes above our faces.  The girls wore pink gowns, which they pulled to their waists as we forded the streams.  Mahine had a mouth-organ on which she played.  We sang and danced, and the tossing torches stirred the shadows of the black wold, and brought out in shifting glimpses the ominous shapes of the monstrous trees.  With all our gaiety, I had only to utter a loud “Aue!” and the natives rushed together for protection against the unseen; not of the physical, but of the dark abode of Po.  In this lonely wilderness they thought that tupapaus, the ghosts of the departed, must have their assembly, and deep in their hearts was a deadly fear of these revenants.

When we approached the umu, I felt the heat fifty feet away.  The pit was a mass of glowing stones, and half a dozen men whom I knew were spreading them as evenly as possible, turning them with long poles.  Each, as it was moved, disclosed its lower surface crimson red and turning white.  The flames leaped up from the wood between the stones.

About the oven, forty feet away, the people of the villages who had gathered, stood or squatted, and solemnly awaited the ritual.  The tahua, Tufetufetu, was still in a tiny hut that had been erected for him, and at prayer.  A deacon of the church went to him, and informed him that the umu was ready, and he came slowly toward us.  He wore a white pareu of the ancient tapa, and a white tiputa, a poncho of the same beaten-bark fabrics.  His head was crowned with ti-leaves, and in his hand he had a wand of the same.  He was in the dim light a vision of the necromancer of medieval books.

He halted three steps from the fiery furnace, and chanted in Tahitian: 

O spirits who put fire in the oven, slack the fire! 
O worm of black earth,
O worm of bright earth, fresh water, sea water, heat of the oven, red
of the oven, support the feet of the walkers, and fan away the fire! 
O Cold Beings, let us pass over the middle of the oven! 
O Great Woman, who puts the fire in the heavens, hold still the leaf
that fans the fire! 
Let thy children go on the oven for a little while! 
Mother of the first footstep! 
Mother of the second footstep! 
Mother of the third footstep! 
Mother of the fourth footstep! 
Mother of the fifth footstep! 
Mother of the sixth footstep! 
Mother of the seventh footstep! 
Mother of the eighth footstep! 
Mother of the ninth footstep! 
Mother of the tenth footstep! 
O Great Woman, who puts the fire in the heavens, all is hidden!