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Updated: June 6, 2025
"For a quarter of an hour," said Haabunai, "my grandfather's people and the warriors of the enemy called thus to each other upon the top of the cliffs, and then Honi and the brother of my grandfather, head men of either side, advanced to battle. "The first time Honi threw his harpoon, he hooked my great-uncle.
I handed him back the gruesome relic, though he began advances to make it my property. For the full demijohn he would have parted with the tiki that had been his grandfather's, but I had no fancy for it. One can buy in Paris purses of human skin for not much more than one of alligator hide. "Honi must have been very tough," I said. "He must have been," Haabunai said regretfully.
All relaxed now, to receive the praises of the governor and the brimming glasses once more offered by the diligent Haabunai and Song, aided by the gendarme. A gruesome cannibal chant followed, accompanied by the booming of the drums, and then, warmed by the liquor that fired their brains, the dancers began the haka, the sexual dance.
Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale, the man under sentence for making palm brandy, were once more the distributors, and took a glass often. The people had thawed since the dance at the governor's inauguration.
Intrepreted by Guillitoue, Haabunai said that the Marquesans were glad to have a new governor, a wise man who would cure their ills, a just ruler, and a friend; then speaking directly to his own people, he praised extravagantly the newcomer, so that Guillitoue choked in his translation, and ceased, and mixed himself a glass of absinthe and water. The governor replied briefly in French.
Soon the demijohn of rum had been emptied into the glasses passing from hand to hand in the garden; Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale again evoked the thrumming beat of the great drums, and the dance began. This was a tragedy of the sea, a pantomine of danger and conflict and celebration. For centuries past the ancestors of these dancers had played it on the Forbidden Height.
With an anguished glance at the assembled spectators, he dashed around the corner of the house, to reappear in an instant with his hands full of green leaves. "Mon dieu!" cried the governor. "Mon salade! Mon salade!" Haabunai, busied with his duties, had forgotten to provide the real and sacred ti.
She said nothing, but went away in the darkness. "And it is written, Haabunai, that searchers for the mei came upon her next day in the upper valley, and she was hanging from a tall palm-tree with a rope of purau about her neck." "That may be a true story," said Haabunai. "Though it is the custom here to eat the eva when one is made sick by life.
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