ke instead the experience of
Rua-a-mariterangi on the isle of Katiu. He had a need for some pandanus,
and crossed the isle to the sea-beach, where it chiefly flourishes. The
day was still, and Rua was surprised to hear a crashing sound among the
thickets, and then the fall of a considerable tree. Here must be some
one building a canoe; and he entered the margin of the wood to find and
pass the time of day with this chance neighbour. The crashing sounded
more at hand; and then he was aware of something drawing swiftly near
among the tree-tops. It swung by its heels downward, like an ape, so
that its hands were free for murder; it depended safely by the slightest
twigs; the speed of its coming was incredible; and soon Rua recognised
it for a corpse, horrible with age, its bowels hanging as it came.
Prayer was the weapon of Christian in the Valley of the Shadow, and it
is to prayer that Rua-a-mariterangi attributes his escape. No merely
human expedition had availed.

This demon was plainly from the grave; yet you will observe he was
abroad by day. And inconsistent as it may seem with the hours of the
night watch and the many references to the rising of the morning star,
it is no singular exception. I could never find a case of another who
had seen this ghost, diurnal and arboreal in its habits; but others have
heard the fall of the tree, which seems the signal of its coming. Mr.
Donat was once pearling on the uninhabited isle of Haraiki. It was a day
without a breath of wind, such as alternate in the archipelago with days
of contumelious breezes. The divers were in the midst of the lagoon upon
their employment; the cook, a boy of ten, was over his pots in the camp.
Thus were all souls accounted for except a single native who accompanied
Donat into the woods in quest of sea-fowls' eggs. In a moment, out of
the stillness, came the sound of the fall of a great tree. Donat would
have passed on to find the cause. "No," cried his companion, "that was
no tree. It was something _not right_. Let us go back to camp." Next
Sunday the divers were turned on, all that part of the isle was
thoroughly examined, and sure enough no tree had fallen. A little later
Mr. Donat saw one of his divers flee from a similar sound, in similar
unaffected panic, on the same isle. But neither would explain, and it
was not till afterwards, when he met with Rua, that he learned the
occasion of their terrors.

But whether by day or night, the purpose of th