The medium is sometimes female.  It was a woman, for instance, who introduced these practices on the north coast of Taiarapu, to the scandal of her own connections, her brother-in-law in particular declaring she was drunk.  But what shocked Tahiti might seem fit enough in the Paumotus, the more so as certain women there possess, by the gift of nature, singular and useful powers.  They say they are honest, well-intentioned ladies, some of them embarrassed by their weird inheritance.  And indeed the trouble caused by this endowment is so great, and the protection afforded so infinitesimally small, that I hesitate whether to call it a gift or a hereditary curse.  You may rob this lady’s coco-patch, steal her canoes, burn down her house, and slay her family scatheless; but one thing you must not do:  you must not lay a hand upon her sleeping-mat, or your belly will swell, and you can only be cured by the lady or her husband.  Here is the report of an eye-witness, Tasmanian born, educated, a man who has made money—­certainly no fool.  In 1886 he was present in a house on Makatea, where two lads began to skylark on the mats, and were (I think) ejected.  Instantly after, their bellies began to swell; pains took hold on them; all manner of island remedies were exhibited in vain, and rubbing only magnified their sufferings.  The man of the house was called, explained the nature of the visitation, and prepared the cure.  A cocoa-nut was husked, filled with herbs, and with all the ceremonies of a launch, and the utterance of spells in the Paumotuan language, committed to the sea.  From that moment the pains began to grow more easy and the swelling to subside.  The reader may stare.  I can assure him, if he moved much among old residents of the archipelago, he would be driven to admit one thing of two—­either that there is something in the swollen bellies or nothing in the evidence of man.

I have not met these gifted ladies; but I had an experience of my own, for I have played, for one night only, the part of the whistling spirit.  It had been blowing wearily all day, but with the fall of night the wind abated, and the moon, which was then full, rolled in a clear sky.  We went southward down the island on the side of the lagoon, walking through long-drawn forest aisles of palm, and on a floor of snowy sand.  No life was abroad, nor sound of life; till in a clear part of the isle we spied the embers of a fire, and not far off, in a dark house, heard natives talking softly.  To sit without a light, even in company, and under cover, is for a Paumotuan a somewhat hazardous extreme.  The whole scene—­ the strong moonlight and crude shadows on the sand, the scattered coals, the sound of the low voices from the house, and the lap of the lagoon along the beach—­put me (I know not how) on thoughts of superstition.  I was barefoot, I observed my steps were noiseless, and drawing near to the dark house, but keeping well in shadow, began