They lived in a spacious house set in three acres of breadfruit and cocoanuts, an ancient grove long in their family.  Often I squatted on their mats, dipping a gingerly finger in their popoi bowl and drinking the sweet wine of the half-ripe cocoanut, the while Mouth of God’s mother spoke long and earnestly on the abode of the damned and the necessity for seeking salvation.  In return, Malicious Gossip spent hours on my paepae telling me of the customs of her people new and old.

“When I was thirteen,” she said, “the whalers still came to Vait-hua, my valley.  There came a young Menike man, straight and bright-eyed, a passenger on a whaling-ship seeking adventure.  I sighed the first time in my life when I looked on him.  He was handsome, and not like other men on your ships.

“The kiss you white men give he taught me to like.  He was generous and gentle and good.  Months we dwelt together in a house by the stream in the valley.  When he sailed away at last, as all white men do who are worth wanting to stay, he tore out my heart.  My milk turned to poison and killed our little child.

“I met long after with Mouth of God.  He took me to his house in the breadfruit-grove.  He was good and gentle, but I was long in learning to love him.  It was the governor who made me know that I was his woman.  It came about in this manner: 

“That governor was one whom all hated for his coldness and cruelty.  Mouth of God worked for him in the house where medicines are made, having learned to mix the medicines in a bowl and to wrap cloths about the wounds of those who were sick.  One day, according to the custom of white men who rule, the governor said to Mouth of God that he must send me to the palace that night.

“When he came home to the house where we lived together, Mouth of God gave me his word.  He said:  ’Go to the river and bathe.  Put on your crimson tunic and flowers in your hair and go to the palace.  The governor gives a feast to-night, and you are to dance and to sleep in the governor’s bed.’”

Malicious Gossip shuddered, and rocked herself to and fro upon the mats.  “Then I would have killed him!  I cried out to him and said:  ’I will not go to the governor!  He is a devil.  My heart hates him.  I am a Marquesan.  What have I to do with a man I hate?’”

“‘Go!’ said Mouth of God, and his eyes were hard as the black stones of the High Place.  ’The governor asks for you.  He is the government.  Since when have Marquesan women said no to the command of the adminstrateur?’

“I wept, but I took my brightest kahu ropa from the sandalwood chest my Menike man had given me, and I went down the path to the stream.  As I went I wept, but my heart was black, and I thought to take a keen-edged knife beneath my tunic when I went to the palace.  But my feet were not yet wet in the edge of the water when Mouth of God called to me.