Then, his body erect, his eyes toward the stars, augustly, and without hesitation or choice of footprints, the tahu walked upon the umu.  His body was naked except for the tapa, which extended from his shoulders to his knees.  The heat radiated from the stones, and sitting on the ground I saw the quivering of the beams just above the oven.

Tufetufetu traversed the entire length of the umu with no single flinching of his muscles or flutter of his eyelids to betray pain or fear.  He raised his wand when he reached the end, and, turning slowly, retraced his steps.

The spectators, who had held their breaths, heaved deep sighs, but no word was spoken as the tahua signed all to follow him in another journey over the white-hot rocks.  All but a few, their number obscured in the darkness, ranged themselves in a line behind him, and with masses of ti-leaves in their hands, and some with girdles hastily made, barefooted they marched over the path he took again.  When the cortege had passed once, the priest said, “Fariu!  Return!” and, their eyes fixed on vacancy, six times the throng were led by him forward and back over the umu.  A woman who looked down and stumbled, left the ranks, and cried out that her leg was burned.  She had an injury that was weeks in curing.

At a sign from Tufetufetu, the people left the proximity of the pit, and while he retired to his hut, several men threw split trunks of banana-trees on the stones.  A dense column of white smoke arose, and its acrid odor closed my eyes for a moment.  When I opened them, my friends of our village were placing the prepared carcasses of pigs on the banana-trunks, with yams, ti-roots and taro.  All these were covered with hibiscus and breadfruit leaves and the earth of the rampart, which was heaped on to retain the heat, and steam the meat and vegetables.

I examined the feet and legs of Raiere and the two girls I had come with, and even the delicate hairs of their calves had not been singed by their fiery promenade.

Meanwhile all disposed themselves at ease.  The solemnity of the Umuti fell from them.  Accordions, mouth-organs, and jews’-harps began to play, and fragments of chants and himenes to sound.  Laughter and banter filled the forest as they squatted or lay down to wait for the feast.  I did not stay.  The Umuti had put me out of humor for fun and food.  I lit my flambeau and plodded through the mape-wood in a brown study, in my ears the fading strains of the arearea, and in my brain a feeling of oneness with the eerie presences of the silent wilderness.  I was with Meshack, Shadrach, and Abednego in their glorious trial in Nebuchadnezzar’s barbaric court.  I was among the tepees of the Red Indians of North America when they leaped unscathed through the roaring blaze of the sacred fire, and trod the burning stones and embers in their dances before the Great Spirit.

The Umuti was not all new to me.  Long ago, when I lived in Hawaii, Papa Ita had come there from Tahiti.  His umu was in the devastated area of Chinatown, a district of Honolulu destroyed by a conflagration purposely begun to erase two blocks of houses in which bubonic plague recurred, and which, unchecked, caused a loss of millions of dollars.