These passed back through Taahauku in extreme disorder; a little after the valley began to be overrun with shouting and triumphing braves; and a letter of warning coming at the same time to Mr. Stewart, he and his Chinamen took refuge with the Protestant missionary in Atuona.  That night the store was gutted, and the bodies cast in a pit and covered with leaves.  Three days later the schooner had come in; and things appearing quieter, Mr. Stewart and the captain landed in Taahauku to compute the damage and to view the grave, which was already indicated by the stench.  While they were so employed, a party of Moipu’s young men, decked with red flannel to indicate martial sentiments, came over the hills from Atuona, dug up the bodies, washed them in the river, and carried them away on sticks.  That night the feast began.

Those who knew Mr. Stewart before this experience declare the man to be quite altered.  He stuck, however, to his post; and somewhat later, when the plantation was already well established, and gave employment to sixty Chinamen and seventy natives, he found himself once more in dangerous times.  The men of Haamau, it was reported, had sworn to plunder and erase the settlement; letters came continually from the Hawaiian missionary, who acted as intelligence department; and for six weeks Mr. Stewart and three other whites slept in the cotton-house at night in a rampart of bales, and (what was their best defence) ostentatiously practised rifle-shooting by day upon the beach.  Natives were often there to watch them; the practice was excellent; and the assault was never delivered—­if it ever was intended, which I doubt, for the natives are more famous for false rumours than for deeds of energy.  I was told the late French war was a case in point; the tribes on the beach accusing those in the mountains of designs which they had never the hardihood to entertain.  And the same testimony to their backwardness in open battle reached me from all sides.  Captain Hart once landed after an engagement in a certain bay; one man had his hand hurt, an old woman and two children had been slain; and the captain improved the occasion by poulticing the hand, and taunting both sides upon so wretched an affair.  It is true these wars were often merely formal—­comparable with duels to the first blood.  Captain Hart visited a bay where such a war was being carried on between two brothers, one of whom had been thought wanting in civility to the guests of the other.  About one-half of the population served day about on alternate sides, so as to be well with each when the inevitable peace should follow.  The forts of the belligerents were over against each other, and close by.  Pigs were cooking.  Well-oiled braves, with well-oiled muskets, strutted on the paepae or sat down to feast.  No business, however needful, could be done, and all thoughts were supposed to be centred in this mockery of war.  A few days later, by a regrettable accident, a man was killed; it was felt at once the thing had gone too far, and the quarrel was instantly patched up.  But the more serious wars were prosecuted in a similar spirit; a gift of pigs and a feast made their inevitable end; the killing of a single man was a great victory, and the murder of defenceless solitaries counted a heroic deed.