‘M.  Donat called it a jest,’ I wrote at the time in my diary.  ’It seemed to me more in the nature of a terrified conjuration, as though she would divert the ghost’s attention from herself.  A cannibal race may well have cannibal phantoms.’  The guesses of the traveller appear foredoomed to be erroneous; yet in these I was precisely right.  The woman had stood by in terror at the funeral, being then in a dread spot, the graveyard.  She looked on in terror to the coming night, with that ogre, a new spirit, loosed upon the isle.  And the words she had cried in Donat’s face were indeed a terrified conjuration, basely to shield herself, basely to dedicate another in her stead.  One thing is to be said in her excuse.  Doubtless she partly chose Donat because he was a man of great good-nature, but partly, too, because he was a man of the half-caste.  For I believe all natives regard white blood as a kind of talisman against the powers of hell.  In no other way can they explain the unpunished recklessness of Europeans.

CHAPTER VI—­GRAVEYARD STORIES

With my superstitious friend, the islander, I fear I am not wholly frank, often leading the way with stories of my own, and being always a grave and sometimes an excited hearer.  But the deceit is scarce mortal, since I am as pleased to hear as he to tell, as pleased with the story as he with the belief; and, besides, it is entirely needful.  For it is scarce possible to exaggerate the extent and empire of his superstitions; they mould his life, they colour his thinking; and when he does not speak to me of ghosts, and gods, and devils, he is playing the dissembler and talking only with his lips.  With thoughts so different, one must indulge the other; and I would rather that I should indulge his superstition than he my incredulity.  Of one thing, besides, I may be sure:  Let me indulge it as I please, I shall not hear the whole; for he is already on his guard with me, and the amount of the lore is boundless.

I will give but a few instances at random, chiefly from my own doorstep in Upolu, during the past month (October 1890).  One of my workmen was sent the other day to the banana patch, there to dig; this is a hollow of the mountain, buried in woods, out of all sight and cry of mankind; and long before dusk Lafaele was back again beside the cook-house with embarrassed looks; he dared not longer stay alone, he was afraid of ‘spirits in the bush.’  It seems these are the souls of the unburied dead, haunting where they fell, and wearing woodland shapes of pig, or bird, or insect; the bush is full of them, they seem to eat nothing, slay solitary wanderers apparently in spite, and at times, in human form, go down to villages and consort with the inhabitants undetected.  So much I learned a day or so after, walking in the bush with a very intelligent youth, a native.  It was a little before noon; a grey day and squally; and perhaps I had spoken lightly.