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Swimming along by the side of it, they bale out the rest, and climbing into it, pursue their voyage. Europeans, however, are not so indifferent to being overturned as are the savages. On one occasion Mr Ellis, accompanied by three ladies, Mrs Orsmond, Mrs Barff, and his wife, with her two children and one or two natives, were crossing a harbour in the island of Huahine.
Was this a remnant of a forgotten cannibalistic habit, or a protest of the Tahitians and Hawaiians against the custom as not being Polynesian, but a concession to a fashion adopted in fighting the Fijian anthropopogi? The people of Huahine, an island near Tahiti, had a supreme god named Tané, who might be touched only by one human being, a man selected for that purpose.
Brown, hungry and thirsty, half out of his head from weakness and suffering, could lie among the rocks with equanimity and listen to the tinkling of ukuleles and guitars, and the hulas and himines of the Huahine women. But when the voices of the Trinity Choir floated over the water he was beside himself.
The rest they shot in the water. I knew them all. They stole the girls from Huahine. They added to their strength with jail-men from Noumea. They robbed the traders in the New Hebrides. They killed the trader at Vanikori, and stole two women there. They " But Grief no longer heard.
Climbing on board the Rattler were the men and the Huahine women who had been hidden in the Valetta's cabin and who had swum for it under the protecting fire. The Fuatino men who had been towing in the whaleboat had cast off the line, dashed back through the passage, and were rowing wildly for the south shore.
The islands of the Pacific Ocean were the principal scene of his labours more particularly Huahine in Tahiti, Raiatea, and Rarotonga. Like the Apostles he worked with his hands, at blacksmith work, gardening, shipbuilding; and he endeavoured to teach the islanders the art of civilised life, at the same time that he instructed them in the truths of religion.
Tané, the Huahine god, was a brother of Oro, and his equal, but there were islands which disputed this equality, and shed blood to disprove it, as the sects of Christianity have since the peaceful Jesus died by the demands of the priests of his nation. Haui was the Tahitian Hercules. Of course he, too, bade the sun to stay a while unmoving, and it did.
Blue and gold, a cathedral ceiling with sanctuary lamps hung high, the dome of earth sparkled and glittered, and on the schooners by the Cercle Bougainville himenes of joy rang out on the soft air. I passed them close, so close that a girl of Huahine who was dancing on the deck of the Mihimana seized me by the arm and embraced me. "Come back, stranger!" she cried in Tahitian.
In one battle that was fought between the people of Huahine and those of Raiatea immense slaughter took place. The fleet of one side consisted of ninety war-canoes, each about a hundred feet long, and filled with men. They met near a place called Hooroto, when a most obstinate and bloody engagement ensued.
But the effort of Christianity to oust paganism in Tahiti brought about many sanguinary conflicts, and plainly God was with the missionaries, who caused the battles. In 1815 the Battle of Feipi gave Tahiti to Pomaré the Great, and to the Protestant ministers, who were his backers. Over three hundred were killed. A woman, the queen of the island of Huahine, commanded in the absence of Pomaré.
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