“That man,” said Le Brunnec, “is the worst devil in the Marquesas.”  Between blows of the axe, the trader told me something of his history: 

The madman was Mohuho, whose name means Great Moth of the Night.  He is the chief whom Lying Bill saw shoot three men in Tahuata for sheer wantonness.  He was then chief of Tahuata, and the power in that island, in Hiva-oa and Fatu-hiva.  He slew every one who opposed him.  He was the scourge of the islands.  He harried valley after valley for lust of blood and the terrible pride of the destroyer.  It was his boast that he had killed sixty people by his own hand, otherwise than in battle.

He was a man of ceaseless energy, a builder of roads, of houses, and canoes.  At Hapatone he had constructed several miles of excellent road with the enforced labor of every man in the valley for a year.  It is all lined with temanu trees, is almost solid stone, and endures.  Its blocks are cemented with blood, for Great Moth of the Night drove men to the work with bullets.

His arsenal was stocked by the French, whose ally he was, and to whom he was very useful in furnishing men for work and in upholding French supremacy.  In Hapatone he was virtually a king, and the fear of him extended throughout the southern Marquesas.

One day he came as a guest to a feast in Taaoa.  There was a blind man, a poor, harmless fellow, who was eating the pig and popoi and saying nothing.  Great Night Moth had a new gun, which he laid beside him while he drank plentifully of the namu enata, until he became quite drunk.

At last the blind man, scared by his threats, started to walk away in the slow, halting way of the sightless, and attracted Great Night Moth’s attention.  He picked up his new gun and while all were petrified with fear of being the target, he shot the blind man so that his body fell into the oven in which the pig had been baked.  The people could only laugh loudly, if not heartily, as if pleased by the joke.

In Hana-teio a man in a cocoanut-tree gathering nuts was ordered to come down by Great Night Moth who was passing on a boar hunt.  The man became confused.  His limbs did not cling to the tree as usual.  He was fearful and could make no motion.

“Poponohoo!  Ve mai!  A haa tata! Come down quickly!” yelled the chief.

The poor wretch could not obey.  He saw the gun and knew the chief.  Great Night Moth brought him down a corpse.

There was no punishment for him.  The French held him accountable only for deeds against their sovereignty.  A superstition that he was protected by the gods, combined with his strength and desperate courage, made him immune from vengeance by the islanders.

These were incidents Le Brunnec knew from witnesses, but it was Many Pieces of Tattooing who told the ancestry of Great Night Moth.

“Pohue-toa (Male Package) uncle of Earth Worm, was prince of Taaoa and father of this man,” said Many Pieces.  “He was one of the biggest men of these islands, and the strongest in Taaoa.  He lived for a while in Hana-menu.