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There was a moment Captain Capriata had taken absinthe with his morning popoi, and was unsteady. He stumbled. I called to him to breathe a prayer to his patron saint he is of Ajaccio in Corsica and to call upon Joan for aid. He straightened up at once, after one fall, and bore the white banner of the Maid in good style from the mission to the deserted inn by the leper-house.
But they coveted her, and they were friends, who shared their wives as they divided their popoi." "Panalua," said Kekela. "That is 'dear friend custom. We had it in Hawaii. Brothers shared their wives, and sisters their husbands." "These two were name-brothers, and loved as though they were brothers by blood," said Malicious Gossip.
All large works, such as the erection of houses, the building of large canoes, and, in ancient days, the raising of paepaes and temples, were done by mutual cooperation; though each family provided its own food and made provision for the future by storing breadfruit in the popoi pits.
The scene under the candlenut torches was as familiar to us as the Ohio River of Uncle Tom to the small-town schoolboy; the meager rows of three-quarter naked Kanakas, yellow with saffron and blue with tattooer's ink; the old women in the background of sultry lights and enormous shadows compounding endless balls of popoi for the feast; the local and desceptered chieftain squatting on his hams and guarding the vanished gallon between his knees; this was all as it should have been.
Popoi bowls and wooden platters of the roasted breadfruit were brought within shelter, and while the hissing rain put out the fires on the paepae the candlenuts were lighted and all squatted for the evening meal. Breadfruit and yams, with a draught of cocoanut milk, satisfied the hunger created by my arduous climb.
But my friends who were filling the popoi pits now might gather from any tree they pleased. There was plenty of breadfruit now that there were few people. Great Fern was culling from a grove on the mountain-side above my house.
And the wicked? Morals as we know them had nothing to do with their sin in his mind. The wicked were the unkind, those who were cruel to children, wives who made bad popoi, and whites with rum privileges who forgot hospitality. Non-Christians may grin at the efforts of missionaries among heathens.
Little children, beginning to eat popoi ere they were fairly weaned, put their whole hands into the dish, and often the lean and mangy curs that dragged out a wretched dog's existence about the paepaes were not deprived of their turn. If one accept the germ theory, one may find in the popoi bowl a cause for the rapid spread of epidemics since the whites brought disease to the islands.
All through the night the game raged beneath the light of the candlenuts, in a silence broken only by the hoarse breathing of the crouching brown men, the sandy-sounding rustle of the palm-fronds overhead, and cries of "Ante uppy!" or "Comely center!" When dawn came grayly through the aisles of the grove, they halted briefly to eat a bowl of popoi and to drink the milk of freshly gathered nuts.
Vanquished Often and my valet were attired as I, and thus we shouted "Kaoha!" to the chieftess and started toward adventure. Seventh Man was dubious about my setting off without some prepared food, popoi or canned fish or biscuits, and without sleeping-mats. "You ketchee hungery by an' soon," he protested. "No got Gold Bed in mountains."
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