n secret, carrying his proportion of the dreadful
meat in a Swedish match-box. The barbarous substance of the drama and
the European properties employed offer a seizing contrast to the
imagination. Yet more striking is another incident of the very year when
I was there myself, 1888. In the spring, a man and woman skulked about
the school-house in Hiva-oa till they found a particular child alone.
Him they approached with honeyed words and carneying manners--"You are
So-and-so, son of So-and-so?" they asked; and caressed and beguiled him
deeper in the woods. Some instinct woke in the child's bosom, or some
look betrayed the horrid purpose of his deceivers. He sought to break
from them; he screamed; and they, casting off the mask, seized him the
more strongly and began to run. His cries were heard; his schoolmates,
playing not far off, came running to the rescue; and the sinister couple
fled and vanished in the woods. They were never identified; no
prosecution followed; but it was currently supposed they had some grudge
against the boy's father, and designed to eat him in revenge. All over
the islands, as at home among our own ancestors, it will be observed
that the avenger takes no particular heed to strike an individual. A
family, a class, a village, a whole valley or island, a whole race of
mankind, share equally the guilt of any member. So, in the above story,
the son was to pay the penalty for his father; so Mr. Whalon, the mate
of an American whaler, was to bleed and be eaten for the misdeeds of a
Peruvian slaver. I am reminded of an incident in Jaluit in the Marshall
group, which was told me by an eye-witness, and which I tell here again
for the strangeness of the scene. Two men had awakened the animosity of
the Jaluit chiefs; and it was their wives who were selected to be
punished. A single native served as executioner. Early in the morning,
in the face of a large concourse of spectators, he waded out upon the
reef between his victims. These neither complained nor resisted;
accompanied their destroyer patiently; stooped down, when they had waded
deep enough, at his command; and he (laying one hand upon the shoulders
of each) held them under water till they drowned. Doubtless, although my
informant did not tell me so, their families would be lamenting aloud
upon the beach.

It was from Hatiheu that I paid my first visit to a cannibal high place.

The day was sultry and clouded. Drenching tropical showers succeeded