ce
in cannibal diet, might depose him, and proclaim either one of the
young nephews his successor.

The father was so troubled that he aroused his immediate body servant,
and the two left Waialua for home shortly after midnight. They arrived
at the royal enclosure at dawn, and went first to the lehua-tree
spoken of by the apparition of the child, and on looking up amid the
branches, sure enough there dangled two little skulls in a large-meshed
fishing-net. Lehuanui then stooped down and scraped away the leaves
and loose dirt from the root indicated, and out rolled a bundle of
tapa, which on being opened was found to contain the bones of two
children. The father reached up for the net containing the skulls, and
putting the bundle of tapa in it, tied the net around his neck. The
servant stood by, a silent and grieved spectator of a scene whose
meaning he fully understood.

The father procured a stone adze and went to the King's sleeping-house,
the servant still following. Here every one but an old woman tending
the kukui-nut candle was asleep. Oahunui was stretched out on a pile
of soft mats covered with his _paiula_, the royal red kapa of old. The
cruel wretch had eaten to excess of the hateful dish he craved, and
having accompanied it with copious draughts of awa juice, was in a
heavy, drunken sleep.

Lehuanui stood over him, adze in hand, and called, "O King, where are
my children?" The stupefied King only stirred uneasily, and would not,
or could not, awake. Lehuanui called him three times, and the sight
of the drunken brute, gorged with his flesh and blood, so enraged
the father that he struck at Oahunui's neck with his stone adze,
and severed the head from the body at one blow.

The father and husband then strode to his own sleeping-house, where
his wife lay asleep with their youngest child in her arms. He aroused
her and asked for his boys. The mother could only weep, without
answering. He upbraided her for her devotion to her brother, and for
having tamely surrendered her children to satisfy the appetite of the
inhuman monster. He reminded her that she had equal power with her
brother, and that the latter was very unpopular, and had she chosen to
resist his demands and called on the retainers to defend her children,
the King would have been killed and her children saved.

He then informed her that, as she had given up his children to be
killed for her brother, he had killed him in retaliation, and, saying,