and by its light he saw his faithless spouse sleeping
alone. Clausen--lucky Clausen--had been sent into Apia an hour before to
get some medicine for one of the manager's children. Te-bari was keenly
disappointed. He would only have half of his revenge. He crept up to
the sleeper, and made one swift blow with the heavy _nifa oti_ Then he
became very busy for a few minutes, and a few hours later was back in
the mountains, smoking Clausen's tobacco, and drinking some of Clausen's
corn schnapps.

When Clausen rode up to his house at three o'clock in the morning, he
found the lamp was burning brightly. Nireeungo was lying on the bed,
covered over with a quilt of navy blue. He called to her, but she made
no answer, and Clausen called her a sleepy little pig. Then he turned
to the side table to take a drink of schnapps--on the edge of it was
Nireeungo's head with its two long plaits of jet-black hair hanging
down, and dripping an ensanguined stream upon the matted floor.

Clausen cleared out of Samoa the very next day. Te-bari had got upon his
nerves.

*****

The forest was dark by the time I had lit a fire between two of the wide
buttresses of the great tree, and I was shaking from head to foot with
ague. The attack, however, only lasted an hour, and then came the usual
delicious after-glow of warmth as the blood began to course riotously
through one's veins and give that temporary and fictitious strength
accompanied by hunger, that is one of the features of malarial fever.

Sitting up, I began to pluck the mountain cock, intending to grill the
chest part as soon as the fire was fit. Then I heard a footstep on the
leaves, and looking up I saw Te-bari standing before me.

"_Ti-a ka po_" (good evening), I said quietly, in his own language,
"will you eat with me?"

He came over to me, still grasping his rifle, and peered into my face.
Then he put out his hand, and sat down quietly in front of me. Except
for a girdle of dracaena leaves around his waist he was naked, but he
seemed well-nourished, and, in fact, fat.

"Will you smoke?" I said presently, passing him a plug of tobacco and
my sheath knife, for I saw that a wooden pipe was stuck in his girdle of
leaves. He accepted it eagerly.

"Do you know me, white man?" he asked abruptly, speaking in the Line
Islands tongue.

I nodded. "You are Te-bari of Maiana. The boy was frightened of you and
ran away."

He showed his gleaming white teeth in a semi-mirthful, semi-ti