re as soft to my body as the waters of a quiet sea. It was as
if angels bore me on a cloud. All toil, all effort was over; I
should never return to care and duty. Dimly I saw a peri waving a fan,
making a breeze scented with ineffable fragrance.

I was then a giant, prone in an endless ease, who stretched from the
waterfall at the topmost point of the valley to the shore of the sea,
and about me ran in many futile excitements the natives of Atuona,
small creatures whose concerns were naught to me.

That vision melted after eons, and I was in the Oti dance in the
Paumotas, where those old women who pose and move by the music of
the drums, in the light of the burning cocoanut husks, leap into the
air and remain so long that the white man thinks he sees the law of
gravitation overcome, remaining fixed in space three or four feet
from the ground while one's heart beats madly and one's brain throbs
in bewilderment. I was among these aged women; I surpassed them all,
and floated at will upon the ether in an eternal witches' dance of
more than human delight.

The orchestra of nature began a symphony of celestial sounds. The
rustling of the palm-leaves, the purling of the brook, and the song
of the _komoko_, nightingale of the Marquesas, mingled in music
sweeter to my _kava_-ravished ears than ever the harp of Apollo upon
Mount Olympus. The chants of the natives were a choir of voices
melodious beyond human imaginings. Life was good to its innermost
core; there was no struggle, no pain, only an eternal harmony of joy.

* * * * *

I slept eight hours, and when I awoke I saw, in the bright oblong of
sunlight outside the open door, Kivi squeezing some of the root of
evil for a hair of the hound that had bitten him.

[Illustration: The Pekia, or Place of Sacrifice, at Atuona]

[Illustration: Marquesan cannibals, wearing dress of human hair]

CHAPTER XX

A journey to Taaoa; Kahuiti, the cannibal chief, and his story of an
old war caused by an unfaithful woman.

It was a chance remark from Mouth of God that led me to take a
journey over the hills to the valley of Taaoa, south of Atuona.
Malicious Gossip and her husband, squatting one evening on my mats in
the light of the stars, spoke of the Marquesan custom in naming
children.

"When a babe is born," said Mouth of God, "all the intimates of his
parents, their relatives and friends, bestow a name upon the infant.
All these names re