he cocoanut,
chestnut, and yam miraculously grew from other parts of a man's
corpse.

Breadfruit, according to Percy Smith, was brought into these islands
from Java by the ancestors of the Polynesians, who left India
several centuries before Christ. They had come to Indonesia
rice-eaters, but there found the breadfruit, "which they took with
them in their great migration into these Pacific islands two
centuries and more after the beginning of this era."

Smith finds in the Tahitian legend proof of this contention. In the
Polynesian language _araea_, the "red earth" of the tale, is the
same as _vari_, and in Indonesia there were the words _fare_
or _pare_, in Malay _padi_ or _peri_, and in Malagasy _vari_, all
meaning rice. A Rarotongan legend relates that in Hawaiki two new
fruits were found, and the _vari_ discarded. These fruits were the
breadfruit and the horse-chestnut, neither of which is a native of
Polynesia.

I related these stories of the _mei_ to Great Fern, who replied:
"_Aue!_ It may be. The old gods were great, and all the world is a
wonder. As for me, I am a Christian. The breadfruit ripens, and I
fill the _popoi_ pit."

Great Fern was my friend, and, as he said, a Christian, yet I fear
that he did not tell me all he knew of the ancient customs. There
was an innocence too innocent in his manner when he spoke of them,
like that of a child who would like one to believe that the cat ate
the jam. And on the night when the _popoi_ pits were filled, pressed
down and running over, when they had been covered with banana leaves
and weighed with heavy stones, and the season's task was finished,
something occurred that filled my mind with many vague surmises.

I had been awakened at midnight by the crashing fall of a cocoanut
on the iron roof above my head. Often during the rainy nights I was
startled by this sound of the incessantly falling nuts, that banged
and rattled like round shot over my head. But on this night, as I
composed myself to slumber again, my drowsy ears were uneasy with
another thing, less a sound than an almost noiseless, thrumming
vibration, faint, but disturbing.

I sat up in my Golden Bed, and listened. Exploding Eggs was gone
from his mat. The little house was silent and empty. Straining my
ears I heard it unmistakably through the rustling noises of the
forest and the dripping of rain from the eaves. It was the far, dim,
almost inaudible beating of a drum.

Old tales stirred my hair