e island, close to men's houses, and (what is worse)
to their wells. I was told they were to protect the isle against inroads
from the sea--divine or diabolical martellos, probably sacred to
Taburik, God of Thunder.

The bay immediately opposite Equator Town, which we called Fu Bay, in
honour of our cook, was thus fortified on either horn. It was well
sheltered by the reef, the enclosed water clear and tranquil, the
enclosing beach curved like a horseshoe, and both steep and broad. The
path debouched about the midst of the re-entrant angle, the woods
stopping some distance inland. In front, between the fringe of the wood
and the crown of the beach, there had been designed a regular figure,
like the court for some new variety of tennis, with borders of round
stones imbedded, and pointed at the angles with low posts, likewise of
stone. This was the king's Pray Place. When he prayed, what he prayed
for, and to whom he addressed his supplications, I could never learn.
The ground was tapu.

In the angle, by the mouth of the path, stood a deserted maniap'. Near
by there had been a house before our coming, which was now transported
and figured for the moment in Equator Town. It had been, and it would be
again when we departed, the residence of the guardian and wizard of the
spot--Tamaiti. Here, in this lone place, within sound of the sea, he had
his dwelling and uncanny duties. I cannot call to mind another case of a
man living on the ocean side of any open atoll; and Tamaiti must have
had strong nerves, the greater confidence in his own spells, or, what I
believe to be the truth, an enviable scepticism. Whether Tamaiti had any
guardianship of the Pray Place I never heard. But his own particular
chapel stood farther back in the fringe of the wood. It was a tree of
respectable growth. Around it there was drawn a circle of stones like
those that enclosed the Pray Place; in front, facing towards the sea, a
stone of a much greater size, and somewhat hollowed, like a piscina,
stood close against the trunk; in front of that again a conical pile of
gravel. In the hollow of what I have called the piscina (though it
proved to be a magic seat) lay an offering of green cocoa-nuts; and when
you looked up you found the boughs of the tree to be laden with strange
fruit: palm-branches elaborately plaited, and beautiful models of
canoes, finished and rigged to the least detail. The whole had the
appearance of a midsummer and sylvan Christmas