It was one of my chief employments these days to go pot-hunting in the woods, which I found (as Case had told me) very rich in game.  I have spoken of the cape which shut up the village and my station from the east.  A path went about the end of it, and led into the next bay.  A strong wind blew here daily, and as the line of the barrier reef stopped at the end of the cape, a heavy surf ran on the shores of the bay.  A little cliffy hill cut the valley in two parts, and stood close on the beach; and at high water the sea broke right on the face of it, so that all passage was stopped.  Woody mountains hemmed the place all round; the barrier to the east was particularly steep and leafy, the lower parts of it, along the sea, falling in sheer black cliffs streaked with cinnabar; the upper part lumpy with the tops of the great trees.  Some of the trees were bright green, and some red, and the sand of the beach as black as your shoes.  Many birds hovered round the bay, some of them snow-white; and the flying-fox (or vampire) flew there in broad daylight, gnashing its teeth.

For a long while I came as far as this shooting, and went no farther.  There was no sign of any path beyond, and the cocoa-palms in the front of the foot of the valley were the last this way.  For the whole “eye” of the island, as natives call the windward end, lay desert.  From Falesa round about to Papa-malulu, there was neither house, nor man, nor planted fruit-tree; and the reef being mostly absent, and the shores bluff, the sea beat direct among crags, and there was scarce a landing-place.

I should tell you that after I began to go in the woods, although no one offered to come near my store, I found people willing enough to pass the time of day with me where nobody could see them; and as I had begun to pick up native, and most of them had a word or two of English, I began to hold little odds and ends of conversation, not to much purpose to be sure, but they took off the worst of the feeling, for it’s a miserable thing to be made a leper of.

It chanced one day towards the end of the month, that I was sitting in this bay in the edge of the bush, looking east, with a Kanaka.  I had given him a fill of tobacco, and we were making out to talk as best we could; indeed, he had more English than most.

I asked him if there was no road going eastward.

“One time one road,” said he.  “Now he dead.”

“Nobody he go there?” I asked.

“No good,” said he.  “Too much devil he stop there.”

“Oho!” says I, “got-um plenty devil, that bush?”

“Man devil, woman devil; too much devil,” said my friend.  “Stop there all-e-time.  Man he go there, no come back.”

I thought if this fellow was so well posted on devils and spoke of them so free, which is not common, I had better fish for a little information about myself and Uma.

“You think me one devil?” I asked.