and the inhabitants were butchered to a man.  In civil life this arrogance was unheard of.  When the council of Old Men was summoned, he went to the Speak House, delivered his mind, and left without waiting to be answered.  Wisdom had spoken:  let others opine according to their folly.  He was feared and hated, and this was his pleasure.  He was no poet; he cared not for arts or knowledge.  ‘My gran’patha one thing savvy, savvy pight,’ observed the king.  In some lull of their own disputes the Old Men of Apemama adventured on the conquest of Apemama; and this unlicked Caius Marcius was elected general of the united troops.  Success attended him; the islands were reduced, and Tenkoruti returned to his own government, glorious and detested.  He died about 1860, in the seventieth year of his age and the full odour of unpopularity.  He was tall and lean, says his grandson, looked extremely old, and ‘walked all the same young man.’  The same observer gave me a significant detail.  The survivors of that rough epoch were all defaced with spearmarks; there was none on the body of this skilful fighter.  ‘I see old man, no got a spear,’ said the king.

Tenkoruti left two sons, Tembaitake and Tembinatake.  Tembaitake, our king’s father, was short, middling stout, a poet, a good genealogist, and something of a fighter; it seems he took himself seriously, and was perhaps scarce conscious that he was in all things the creature and nursling of his brother.  There was no shadow of dispute between the pair:  the greater man filled with alacrity and content the second place; held the breach in war, and all the portfolios in the time of peace; and, when his brother rated him, listened in silence, looking on the ground.  Like Tenkoruti, he was tall and lean and a swift talker—­a rare trait in the islands.  He possessed every accomplishment.  He knew sorcery, he was the best genealogist of his day, he was a poet, he could dance and make canoes and armour; and the famous mast of Apemama, which ran one joint higher than the mainmast of a full-rigged ship, was of his conception and design.  But these were avocations, and the man’s trade was war.  ‘When my uncle go make wa’, he laugh,’ said Tembinok’.  He forbade the use of field fortification, that protractor of native hostilities; his men must fight in the open, and win or be beaten out of hand; his own activity inspired his followers; and the swiftness of his blows beat down, in one lifetime, the resistance of three islands.  He made his brother sovereign, he left his nephew absolute.  ’My uncle make all smooth,’ said Tembinok’.  ‘I mo’ king than my patha:  I got power,’ he said, with formidable relish.