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"That man," said Le Brunnec, "is the worst devil in the Marquesas." Between blows of the axe, the trader told me something of his history: The madman was Mohuho, whose name means Great Moth of the Night. He is the chief whom Lying Bill saw shoot three men in Tahuata for sheer wantonness. He was then chief of Tahuata, and the power in that island, in Hiva-oa and Fatu-hiva.

Her father had spent thirty years on Hiva-oa, laboring to wring a fortune from the toil of the natives, and dying, he had left it all to this daughter, who, with her laces and jewels, her elegant, slim form and haughty manner, was in this wild abode of barefooted, half-naked people like a pearl in a gutter. She was free now to do what she liked with herself and her fortune. What would she do?

Anchorage of Taha-Uka; Exploding Eggs, and his engagement as valet; inauguration of the new governor; dance on the palace lawn. As we approached Hiva-oa the giant height of Temetiu slowly lifted four thousand feet above the sea, swathed in blackest clouds. Below, purple-black valleys came one by one into view, murky caverns of dank vegetation.

It lay before us, a long and narrow stretch of sand behind a foaming and heavy surf; beyond, a few scattered wooden buildings among palm and banian-trees, and above, the ribbed gaunt mountains shutting in a deep and gloomy ravine. It was a lonely, beautiful place, ominous, melancholy, yet majestic. "Bloody Hiva-oa," this island was called.

A search for rubber-trees on the plateau of Ahoa; a fight with the wild white dogs; story of an ancient migration, told by the wild cattle hunters in the Cave of the Spine of the Chinaman. I went one day with Le Brunnec, the French trader, in search of rubber trees on the plateau of Ahao, above Hanamenu, on the other side of Hiva-oa Island.

The accursed Tahitian had them all but a few now being waged. Defeated players were even now racing over the mountains in the darkness, ransacking each hut for more. The reputation of Hiva-oa, of the island itself, was at stake. A foreigner had dishonored their people, or would if they did not win back what he had gained from them. She was half Chinese; her father's soul was concerned.

He had read of the South Seas; loved to read of them; and let their image fasten in his heart: till at length he could refrain no longer must set forth, a new Rudel, for that unseen homeland and has now dwelt for years in Hiva-oa, and will lay his bones there in the end with full content; having no desire to behold again the places of his boyhood, only, perhaps once, before he dies the rude and wintry landscape of Cape Flattery.

Across the bottom of the letter was written in English: "The kid disappeared from the leper settlement. They think he drowned himself." Thirty-seven days at sea; life of the sea-birds; strange phosphorescence; first sight of Fatu-hiva; history of the islands; chant of the Raiateans. Thirty-seven days at sea brought us to the eve of our landing in Hiva-oa in the Marquesas.

The smoke of the Civil War had hardly cleared away when Captain Hart had persuaded him, Ah Yu and other California Chinese to come to Hiva-oa, and put their labor into his cotton plantations. Cannibalism was common at that date. I asked the old man if he had witnessed it. "My see plenty fella eatee," he replied. "Kanaka no likee Chineeman. Him speak bad meatee."

In Tahitian, Marquesan, and French, with now and then an English word, he explained that he, a Tahitian marooned on Hiva-oa from a schooner because of a broken leg, wished to pass the tedium of his exile in an innocent game of cards. "I desire a mere permission to buy two packs of cards at the Chinaman's," he begged. "I would teach my neighbors here the jeu de pokaree.