t same night one goes to find the sacred leaves of the ti. He
takes the leaves that float in the wind; those called raoere ti,
and which are used as medicine. He gathers the leaves and carries
them to the oven.

The fire is lighted at four of the morning. When the fire is burning
brightly, and the oven is very hot, the sorcerer gives his assistants
charge of the fire, and instructs them as to their duties.

When the flames are down, Tupua approached the oven, and before
walking upon it, he pronounced the following prayer.

"O men about the oven! Piraeuri and Piraetea! Let us join the army
of the gods in the furnace!"

Then, said Tupua:

"O water, go in the fire! O sea water, go in the fire!"

Waving the ti leaves on the border of the oven, Tupua said:

"O Woman who puts the fire in the heaven and in the clouds, permit
us to go on foot over the oven!"

Then those who wish to, pass onto the oven, one after another. If
but one falls all will be burned. The last must watch the sorcerer,
to return when he makes the sign.

That is the way this deed, the deed of the devil, is done by Tupua.

The woman called Vahine tahura'i is an evil spirit.

Concerning Piraeuri and Piritea, Tupua would better not have spoken,
as it was a useless prayer.

Do not introduce the sorcery in the land of the whites!

Do not carry there this custom of lighting the oven!

It is the work of an evil spirit of the night; this act of Tupua.

For that reason I have said little of him in my story. I have spoken.

--Taumihau, The Man.

Chapter XXVI

Farewell to Tautira--My good-bye feast--Back at the Tiare--A talk with
Lovaina--The Cercle Bougainville--Death of David--My visit to the
cemetery--Off for the Marquesas.

The smell of the burning wood of the Umuti was hardly out of my
nostrils before my day of leaving Tautira came. I had long wanted to
visit the Marquesas Islands, and the first communication I had from
Papeete in nearly three months was from the owners of the schooner
Fetia Taiao, notifying me that that vessel, commanded by Captain
William Pincher, would sail for the archipelago in a few days,
"crew and weather willing." I was eager for the adventure, to voyage
to the valley of Typee, where Herman Melville had lived with Fayaway
and Kori-Kori, where Captain Porter had erected the American flag a
century before, and where cannibalism and tattooing had reached their
most artistic development. But to sever the tie with