olved as above, not to take any one's life for a week, I felt more
patient.

Four days passed, somehow or another, and on the morning of the fifth,
to my extreme delight, I saw a small canoe, pulled by one man, landing
on the beach before the house. He fastened his canoe and advanced
towards the kitchen, which was detached from the house, and, in the
late deplorable state of affairs, had become my regular residence. I
sat in the doorway, and soon perceived that my visitor was a famous
_tohunga_, or priest, and who also had the reputation of being a witch
of no ordinary dimensions. He was an old, grave, stolid-looking savage,
with one eye; the other had been knocked out long ago in a fight,
before he turned parson. On he came, with a slow, measured step,
slightly gesticulating with one hand, and holding in the other a very
small basket, not more than nine or ten inches long. He came on,
mumbling and grumbling a perfectly unintelligible _karakia_ or
incantation. I guessed at once he was coming to disenchant me, and
prepared my mind to submit to any conditions or ceremonial he should
think fit to impose. My old friend came gravely up, and putting his
hand into the little basket pulled out a baked _kumera_, saying, "_He
kai mau._" I of course accepted the offered food, took a bite, and as I
ate he mumbled his incantation over me.

I remember I felt a curious sensation at the time, like what I fancied
a man must feel who had just sold himself, body and bones, to the
devil. For a moment I asked myself the question whether I was not
actually being then and there handed over to the powers of darkness.
The thought startled me. There was I, an unworthy but believing member
of the Church of England as by Parliament established, "knuckling down"
abjectly to the ministration of a ferocious old cannibal, wizard,
sorcerer, high priest,--or, as it appeared very probable,--to Satan
himself. "Blacken his remaining eye! knock him over and run the
country!" whispered quite plainly in my ear my guardian angel, or else
a little impulsive sprite who often made suggestions to me in those
days. For a couple of seconds the sorcerer's eye was in desperate
danger; but just in those moments the ceremony, or at least this most
objectionable part of it, came to an end.

The _tohunga_ stood back and said, "Have you been in the house?"
Fortunately I had presence of mind enough to _forget_ that I had, and
said, "No." "Throw out all those pots and ket