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Consumption was first brought to the islands by one of these whalers, and made such alarming inroads on the people of Hanavave that most of the remainder forsook their homes and crossed to the island of Tahuata, to escape the devil the white man had let loose among them.
Her mast was still stepped, but a hundred centipedes crawled over the hull. When I returned to the fire, the boatmen were talking. Ugh! Dried-up Stream! his stomach full and smoke in his mouth, bethought himself of a tale, an incident of this very spot. In a sardonic manner he began: "The men of this island, Tahuata, in the old days descended on Fatu-hiva to hunt the man-meat.
That afternoon she was sitting on my paepae, a bewitching sight as she held the suckling to her breast and crooned of his forefather's deeds before the white had gripped them. Visit of Chief Seventh Man Who is So Angry He Wallows in the Mire; journey to Vait-hua on Tahuata island; fight with the devil-fish; story of a cannibal feast and the two who escaped.
In the morning the other captives were dead, but those who escaped were months in the fastness of the heights, living on roots and on birds they snared. In the end they went to Motopu. They were well received, for the Tahuata warriors thought a god had aided them, and they and their children lived long there."
Months of storms, said Kivi, had felled many a stately palm of Taka-Uka and washed thousands of ripe cocoanuts into the bay, whence the current that runs swift across the channel had swept the fruitage of the winds straight to the inlet of Motopu, on the island of Tahuata. The men of that village, with little effort to themselves, had reaped richly.
"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.
"In the night, when the Tahuata men slept from their gluttony, one of them arose silently and unbound a prisoner who was his friend, and told him to run to the mountains. He then lay down and slept, and in the darkness this man who had been freed returned stealthily in the darkness, and unloosed a girl, the same who had been forgotten on the sand.
One day when the valley was crazed, a native killed the Raratonga man. You will find the murderer living on Tahuata now. Frère Fesal buried his assistant, and fled here. "That date was about the last Hanavave suffered from cannibalism and extreme sorcery. The taua, the pagan priest, was still powerful, however, and his gods demanded victims.
A curse is upon it, and while the cocoanuts flourish and all is fair to the eye, it remains a shunned and haunted spot. Tahuata, that lovely isle of the valley of Vait-hua, rose on our left, with the cape Te hope e te keko, a purple coast miles away, which as the dusk descended grew darker and was lost. The shadowy silhouettes of the mountains of Hiva-oa projected themselves on the horizon.
We struck Vait-hua on the island of Tahuata. It was heaven. Rivers and trees and women. Women! Sacré! How I loved them! "I came to Taha-Uka with Mathieu Scallamera. We worked for Captain Hart in the cotton, driving the Chinese and natives. Bill Pincher was a boy, and he worked there, too. In the moonlight on the beach there were dances. The women danced naked on the beaches in the moonlight.
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