holding the haunch carefully.
"That is the custom. Always they used to dig them near the house, so
that the sick person might see the grave, and in its digging the
sick had much to say, and enjoyed it. Now, _grace a dieu!_ if
Catholics, they are buried in consecrated ground where the body may
rest serene until the trumpet sounds the final judgment. Death is
terrible, but these Marquesans make no more of it than of a journey
to another island, and much less than of a voyage to Tahiti. They
die as peacefully as a good Catholic who is sure of his crown in
Heaven. And as they are children, only children, the wisest or the
worst of them, the Good God will know how to count their sins. It is
those who scandalize them who shall pay dear, those wicked whites
who have forsaken God, or who worship him in false temples."

The coffin of Aumia was then beside the house, turned over so that
rain might not make it unpresentable. She had asked for it weeks
before. To the Marquesan his coffin is as important as, to us, the
house the newly-married pair are to live in. These people know that
almost every foot of their land holds the bones or dust of a corpse,
and this remnant of a race, overwhelmed by tragedy, can look on
death only as a relief from the oppression of alien and
unsympathetic white men. They go to the land of the _tupapaus_ as
calmly as to sleep.

"I have never seen a Marquesan afraid to die," said Sister Serapoline.
"I have been at the side of many in their last moments. It is a
terrible thing to die, but they have no fear at all."

The husband of Aumia, a jolly fellow of thirty, was practising on a
drum for the entertainment of his wife. He said that the corpse of
his grandfather, a chief, had been oiled and kept about the house
until it became mummified. This, he said, had been quite the custom.
The body was washed very thoroughly, and rubbed with cocoanut-oil.
It was laid in the sun, and members of the family appointed to turn
it many times a day, so that all parts might be subjected to an even
heat. The anointing with oil was repeated several times daily. Weeks
or months of this process reduced the corpse to a mummified condition,
and if it were the body of a chief it was then put in his canoe and
kept for years in a ceremonial way. But no mark was ever placed to
show where the dead were buried, and there were no funeral ceremonies.
Better that none knew where the body was laid and that the chosen
friends who carri