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Updated: June 18, 2025
Tonoi obtained sufficient coarse brown tappa to make a short mantle of this description; and in five minutes the doctor was equipped. Zeke, eyeing his toga critically, reminded its proprietor that there were many streams to ford, and precipices to scale, between Martair and Tamai; and if he travelled in petticoats, he had better hold them up. Besides other deficiencies, we were utterly shoeless.
Returning to the house, Shorty, assisted by old Tonoi, cooked the dinner; and, after we had all partaken thereof, both the Cockney and Zeke threw themselves into one of the hammocks, inviting us to occupy the other. Thinking it no bad idea, we did so; and, after skirmishing with the mosquitoes, managed to fall into a doze.
The next morning at breakfast, old Tonoi ran in, and told us that the voyagers were returning. We hurried down to the beach, and saw the boat gliding toward us, with a dozing islander at the helm, and Zeke standing up in the bows, jingling a small bag of silver, the proceeds of his cargo.
Tonoi said it was an almost forgotten burial-place, of great antiquity, where no one had been interred since the islanders had been Christians. Sealed up in dry, deep vaults, many a dead heathen was lying here. Curious to prove the old man's statement, I was anxious to get a peep at the catacombs; but hermetically overgrown with vegetation as they were, no aperture was visible.
Before gaining the level of the valley, we passed by the site of a village, near a watercourse, long since deserted. There was nothing but stone walls, and rude dismantled foundations of houses, constructed of the same material. Large trees and brushwood were growing rankly among them. I asked Tonoi how long it was since anyone had lived here.
The neighbours, armed with two or three muskets, at once started to recover, if possible, his unfortunate brother's remains. At nightfall, they returned without discovering any trace of him; but the next morning, Tonoi himself caught a glimpse of the bullock, marching across the mountain's brow, with a long dark object borne aloft on his horns.
FAIR dawned, over the hills of Martair, the jocund morning of our hunt. Everything had been prepared for it overnight; and, when we arrived at the house, a good breakfast was spread by Shorty: and old Tonoi was bustling about like an innkeeper.
In this proposition, I gladly acquiesced; though Peter, who was a great sportsman, put on a long face. The muskets and ammunition were forthwith got from overhead; and, everything being then ready, Zeke cried out, "Tonoi! come; aramai! Shorty, my lad, look arter things, you know; and if you likes, why, there's them roots in the field yonder."
Our island friends were now in high spirits; all courage and alacrity. Old Tonoi thought nothing of taking poor Taurus himself by the horns, and peering into his glazed eyes. Our ship knives were at once in request; and, skinning the cattle, we hung them high up by cords of bark from the boughs of a tree.
The massacre of the cattle extended to the hapless goats. In one year, three thousand of their skins were sold to the merchants of Honolulu, fetching a quartila, or a shilling sterling apiece. After this digression, it is time to run on after Tonoi and the Yankee. Here and there were green gulfs, down which it made one giddy to peep.
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