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Our destination was a waterfall, with a pool in which we might bathe, and after leaving the Pekia we followed the stream, climbing higher and higher from the sea. In the Marquesas all the rivers begin in the high mountains, where from the precipices leap the torrents in times of rain.
He said that they should go to Atuona, and bring back bodies for feasting. Many nights the drums beat, and the chief talked much, but there was no war. "The High Priest went to the Pekia again, and when he came away he ran without stopping for two days and a night, till he fell without breath, as one dead, and foam was on his mouth. The gods were angry. Still there was no war.
Mika!" and moved tiny arms around and around a plate of white metal. This man stood now before the Great Sea Slug, and the chief paused, while his hungry people came closer that they might hear what befell. "Where are you going?" said Père Orens. "To Pekia, the High Place, to cook and eat," said Great Sea Slug.
I saw the warriors with their spears of cocoanut-wood and their deadly clubs of ironwood carved and shining with oil, their baskets of polished stones slung about their waists, and their slings of fiber, dancing in the sacred grove of the Pekia, its shadows lighted by the blaze of the flickering candlenuts and the scented sandalwood. "'I am The Wind That Lays Low The Mighty Tree.
For a moment he writhed in a silence even more ghastly than his laughter, then lay still. "Au!" he said, turning over on his back. "My grandfather believed this Pekia to be the abode of demons." He paused. "As for me, I believe in none of them, or in any other gods." And he blew out his breath contemptuously. Le Moine surveyed the scene critically.
Had he known matches in his youth? Aue! The peoples of the islands must return to the ways of their fathers! He leaped from the top of the Pekia, and seizing his long knife, he cut a five-foot piece of parua-wood and shaped it to four inches in width. With our fascinated gaze upon him, he whittled sharp a foot-long piece of the same wood, and straddled the longer stick.
The sound of them rolled from the Pekia, and every man who could throw a spear or hold a war-club came to their call." Kahuiti's soul was rapt in the story. His voice had the deep tone of the violoncello, powerful, vibrant, and colorful. He had lived in that strange past, and the things he recalled were precious memories.
A mile up the valley we came suddenly upon a plateau, and saw before us the remains of an ancient Pekia, or High Place, a grim and grisly monument of the days of evil gods and man-eating. This, in the old days, was the paepae tapu, or Forbidden Height, the abode of dark and terrible spirits.
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