He dipped a shell in the trough, tossed a few drops over his shoulder to propitiate the god of the kava-drinking, and placed the shell in my hands.

Ugh!  The liquor tasted like earth and water, sweetish for a moment and then acrid and pungent.  It was hard to get down, but all the men took theirs at a gulp, and when Kivi gave me another shellful, I followed their pattern.

“Kai!  Kai. Eat!  Eat!” Kivi shouted then.  The women hurried forward with the food, and we fell to with a will.  Pig and popoi, shark sweetbreads, roasted breadfruit and sweet potatoes, fruits and cocoanut-milk leaped from the broad leaf platters to wide-open mouths.  Hardly a word was spoken.  The business of eating proceeded rapidly, in silence, save for the night-rustling of the palms and the soft sound of the women’s hastening bare feet.

Only, as he saw any slackening, Kivi repeated vigorously, “Kai!  Kai!”

I sat with my back against the wall of the house of Broken Plate, as I ate quickly at the mandate of my host, and soon I felt the need of this support.  The feast finished, the guests reclined upon the mats.  Women and children were devouring the remnants left upon the leaf platters.  The torches had been extinguished, all but one.  Its flickering gleam fell upon the aged face of Kivi, and the whites of his eyes caught and reflected the light.  The tattooing that framed them appeared like black holes from which the sparks glinted uncannily, and the kava mounting to his brain or to mine gave those sparks a ghastliness that fascinated me in my keen, somnolent state.

From the shadows where the women crouched the face of Teata rose like an eerie flower.  She had adorned the two long black plaits of her hair with the brilliant phosphorescence of Ear of the Ghost Woman, the strange fungus found on old trees, a favored evening adornment of the island belles.  The handsome flowers glowed about her bodiless head like giant butterflies, congruous jewels for such a temptress of such a frolic.  The mysterious light added a gleam to her velvet cheek and neck that made her seem like the ghost-woman of old legend, created to lead the unwary to intoxicated death.

The palaver came to me out of the darkness, like voices from a phonograph-horn, thin and far away.  One told the tale of Tahiapepae, the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.

Famine had come upon Atuona Valley.  Children died of hunger on the paepaes, and the breasts of mothers shrunk so that they gave forth no milk.  Therefore the warriors set forth in the great canoes for Motopu.  Meat was the cry, and there was no other meat than puaa oa, the “long pig.”

Then in the darkness the hungry fighting men of Atuona silently beached their canoes and crept upon the sleeping village of Motopu.  Seven were killed before they could fly to the hills, and one was captured alive, a slender, beautiful girl of ten years, whom they tied hands and feet and threw into the canoe with the slain ones.