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The population of the valley, eager for counsel, was gathered on the old stone benches where half a century earlier their sorcerers had sat. In the twilight Kahuiti stood before us, his long white beard tied in a Psyche knot on his broad, tattooed chest. His voice was stern. We were fools, he said, to be denied food and smoke by the foreigner. What of matches before the French came?
These whom you see are his children's children. Would you like to meet my wife's father-in-law, Kahuiti? He has eaten many people. He talks well." Eo! Would I! I vowed that I would be honored by the acquaintance of any of the relatives of my host, and specially I desired to converse with old, wise men of good taste. "That man, Kahauiti, has seen life," said Strong in Battle.
"Kahuiti, is it not good that the eating of men is stopped?" The majestic chief looked at me, his deep brown eyes looking child-like in their band of blue ink. For ten seconds he stared at me fixedly, and then smiled uncertainly, as may have Peter the fisherman when he was chided for cutting off the ear of one of Judas' soldiers. He was of the old order, and the new had left him unchanged.
I slept eight hours, and when I awoke I saw, in the bright oblong of sunlight outside the open door, Kivi squeezing some of the root of evil for a hair of the hound that had bitten him. A journey to Taaoa; Kahuiti, the cannibal chief, and his story of an old war caused by an unfaithful woman.
He had guns from the whalers, and he was afraid of nothing save the Ghost Woman of the Night. Again the warriors came to the High Place, and now there were many drums." Kahuiti sprang to his feet. He struck the corner post of the hut with his fist. His eyes burned. "'Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Tuti! Tuti! Tutuituiti!" "That was what the war drums said.
The eating was a thing accomplished in the past; the teachings of that stern Calvinist, his mother, forbade that he should eat Kahuiti in retaliation, therefore their relations were amicable. The following morning, attended by the faithful Exploding Eggs, I set out toward Taaoa Valley.
"But there was too much peace between us, too many men with Atuona women, too many Atuona children adopted by Taaoa women. The peace was happy, and there was no great warrior to urge." "You had brave men and strong men then," I said, with a sigh for the things I had missed by coming late. "Tuitui! You put weeds in my mouth!" exclaimed Kahuiti. "I cannot talk with your words. Ue te etau!
A week later I met her one evening at Otupoto, that dividing place between the valleys of Taaoa and Atuona, where Kahuiti and his fellow warriors had trapped the human meat. I had walked there to sit on the edge of the precipice and watch the sun set in the sea. She came on horseback from her home toward the village, to spend Sunday with the nuns.
Also the women of Atuona among us said that there should be peace, and the women of Taaoa who had taken as their own many children from Atuona. Therefore we begged the most high gods to excuse us." "Women had much power then," I said. Kahuiti chuckled. "The French god and the priests of the Farani have taken it from them," he commented. "I have known the day when women ruled.
Since Kahuiti, my man-eating friend of Taaoa, was born, the cycle had been completed. I was on my way now to see, in Tai-o-hae, a man who was giving his life to bring the white man's religion to the few dying natives who remained. At dusk the wind died, and we put out the oars.
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