Smith finds in the Tahitian legend proof of this contention.  In the Polynesian language araea, the “red earth” of the tale, is the same as vari, and in Indonesia there were the words fare or pare, in Malay padi or peri, and in Malagasy vari, all meaning rice.  A Rarotongan legend relates that in Hawaiki two new fruits were found, and the vari discarded.  These fruits were the breadfruit and the horse-chestnut, neither of which is a native of Polynesia.

I related these stories of the mei to Great Fern, who replied:  “Aue! It may be.  The old gods were great, and all the world is a wonder.  As for me, I am a Christian.  The breadfruit ripens, and I fill the popoi pit.”

Great Fern was my friend, and, as he said, a Christian, yet I fear that he did not tell me all he knew of the ancient customs.  There was an innocence too innocent in his manner when he spoke of them, like that of a child who would like one to believe that the cat ate the jam.  And on the night when the popoi pits were filled, pressed down and running over, when they had been covered with banana leaves and weighed with heavy stones, and the season’s task was finished, something occurred that filled my mind with many vague surmises.

I had been awakened at midnight by the crashing fall of a cocoanut on the iron roof above my head.  Often during the rainy nights I was startled by this sound of the incessantly falling nuts, that banged and rattled like round shot over my head.  But on this night, as I composed myself to slumber again, my drowsy ears were uneasy with another thing, less a sound than an almost noiseless, thrumming vibration, faint, but disturbing.

I sat up in my Golden Bed, and listened.  Exploding Eggs was gone from his mat.  The little house was silent and empty.  Straining my ears I heard it unmistakably through the rustling noises of the forest and the dripping of rain from the eaves.  It was the far, dim, almost inaudible beating of a drum.

Old tales stirred my hair as I stood on my paepae listening to it.  At times I thought it a fancy, again I heard it and knew that I heard it.  At last, wrapping a pareu about me, I went down my trail to the valley road.  The sound was drowned here by the splashing chuckle of the stream, but as I stood undecided in the pool of darkness beneath a dripping banana I saw a dark figure slip silently past me, going up toward the High Place.  It was followed by another, moving through the night like a denser shadow.  I went back to my cabin, scouted my urgent desire to shut and barricade the door, and went to bed.  After a long time I slept.

When I awoke next morning Exploding Eggs was preparing my breakfast as usual, the sunlight streamed over breadfruit and palm, and the night seemed a dream.  But there were rumors in the village of a strange dance held by the inhabitants of Nuka-hiva, on another island, in celebration of the harvest of the mei.  Weird observances were hinted, rites participated in only by men who danced stark naked, praising the old gods.