with terror of the coming night and the long forest road. These are the
commons. Take the chiefs. There has been a great coming and going of
signs and omens in our group. One river ran down blood; red eels were
captured in another; an unknown fish was thrown upon the coast, an
ominous word found written on its scales. So far we might be reading in
a monkish chronicle; now we come on a fresh note, at once modern and
Polynesian. The gods of Upolu and Savaii, our two chief islands,
contended recently at cricket. Since then they are at war. Sounds of
battle are heard to roll along the coast. A woman saw a man swim from
the high seas and plunge direct into the bush; he was no man of that
neighbourhood; and it was known he was one of the gods, speeding to a
council. Most perspicuous of all, a missionary on Savaii, who is also a
medical man, was disturbed late in the night by knocking; it was no hour
for the dispensary, but at length he woke his servant and sent him to
inquire; the servant, looking from a window, beheld crowds of persons,
all with grievous wounds, lopped limbs, broken heads, and bleeding
bulletholes; but when the door was opened all had disappeared. They were
gods from the field of battle. Now, these reports have certainly
significance; it is not hard to trace them to political grumblers or to
read in them a threat of coming trouble; from that merely human side I
found them ominous myself. But it was the spiritual side of their
significance that was discussed in secret council by my rulers. I shall
best depict this mingled habit of the Polynesian mind by two connected
instances. I once lived in a village, the name of which I do not mean to
tell. The chief and his sister were persons perfectly intelligent:
gentlefolk, apt of speech. The sister was very religious, a great
church-goer, one that used to reprove me if I stayed away; I found
afterwards that she privately worshipped a shark. The chief himself was
somewhat of a freethinker; at the least a latitudinarian: he was a man,
besides, filled with European knowledge and accomplishments; of an
impassive, ironical habit; and I should as soon have expected
superstition in Mr. Herbert Spencer. Hear the sequel. I had discovered
by unmistakable signs that they buried too shallow in the village
graveyard, and I took my friend, as the responsible authority, to task.
"There is something wrong about your graveyard," said I, "which you must
attend to, or it may have very