“‘Aue te hanahana, aua ho’i te kaikai,’ said his father-in-law.  ’He who will not labor, neither shall he eat.’  But the white man laughed and ate and labored not.

“A season passed and another, and there came a time of little rain.  The bananas were few, and the breadfruit were not plentiful.  One evening, therefore, the old men met in conference, and this was their decision:  ‘Rats are becoming a nuisance, and we will abate them.’

“Next morning the father sent Tahia on an errand to another valley.  Then men began to dig a large oven in the earth before Tahia’s house, where the white man lay on the mats at ease.  Presently he looked and wondered and looked again.  And at length he rose and came down to the oven, saying, ‘What’s up?’

“‘Plenty kaikai.  Big pig come by and by,’ they said.

“So he stood waiting while they dug, and no pig came.  Then he said, ‘Where is the pig?’ And at that moment the u’u crashed upon his skull, so that he fell without life and lay in the oven.  Wood was piled about him, and he was baked, and there was feasting in Hanamenu.

“In the twilight Tahia came over the hills, weary and hungry, and asked for her white man.  ‘He has gone to the beach,’ they said.

“He will return soon, therefore sit and eat, my daughter,” said her father, and gave her the meat wrapped in leaves.  So she ate heartily, and waited for her husband.  And all the feasters laughed at her, so that little by little she learned the truth.  She said nothing, but went away in the darkness.

“And it is written, Haabunai, that searchers for the mei came upon her next day in the upper valley, and she was hanging from a tall palm-tree with a rope of purau about her neck.”

“That may be a true story,” said Haabunai.  “Though it is the custom here to eat the eva when one is made sick by life.  And very few white men were ever eaten in the islands, because they knew too much and were claimed by some woman of power.”  He paused for a moment to puff his cigarette.

“Now there was a sailor whom my grandfather ate, and he was white.  But there was ample cause for that, for never was a man so provoking.

“He was a harpooner on a whale-ship, a man who made much money, but he liked rum, and when his ship left he stayed behind.  They sent two boats ashore and searched for him, but my grandfather sent my father with him into the hills, and after three days the captain thought he had been drowned, and sailed away without him.

“My grandfather gave him my father’s sister to wife, and like that man of whom you told, he was much loved by her, though he would do nothing but make namu enata and drink it and dance and sleep.  Grandfather said that he could dance strange dances of the sailor that made them all laugh until their ribs were sore.

“This man, whose name was Honi—­”

“Honi?” said I.  “I do not know that word.”