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Updated: May 31, 2025
A delightful sense of coolness was his first sensation on entering, and then with noiseless step the other women followed and seated themselves on the ground. Still clasping his hand, Varua led him to the farther end of the house, and pointed to a motionless figure that lay on a couch of mats, covered with a large piece of navy-blue calico.
At the foot of the wall of the PAPAKU were a number of prone figures, with hands and arms sculptured in low relief, the outspread fingers clasping the hips. About a cable length from the wall stood two stone houses memorials of the olden time and it was to these that Varua and the two white men, attended now by women only, directed their steps.
Seating herself, with Taku the Sailor, on the mats, Varua motioned the captain to one of the boxes, and then told him a tale that moved him rough, fierce, and tyrannical as was his nature to the deepest pity. Filled with fear were we; but yet as we had done no wrong we stood on the beach to welcome.
Slowly the old seaman drew the covering over the still features, and, with an unusual emotion stirring his rude nature, he rose, and, followed by Varua, walked outside and sat upon a broken pillar of lava that lay under the wall of the PAPAKU.
There was a dead silence, and for nearly half a minute no one spoke. The keen blue eyes of the American looked from one face to another inquiringly, and then settled on the fat, good-natured features of Varua, the big woman. Holding her hands, palms upwards, to the captain, she endeavoured to speak, and then, to his astonishment, he saw that her dark eyes were filled with tears.
Calling his boatsteerer, he ordered him to return to the beach and go off to the ship with instructions to the mate to have a coffin made as quickly as possible and send it ashore; and then, at a glance from Varua, who smiled a grave approval as she listened to his orders, he followed her and the man she called Taku into the smaller of the two houses.
One ol' T'ytee woman she work for her to keep all chil'ren clean, an' eat, an' she notice two day ago one mornin' she more thin. She ask her, 'Where that babee? She say the varua, a bad devil, take it.
It is plain we have in Europe stories of a similar complexion; and the Polynesian varua ino or aitu o le vao is clearly the near kinsman of the Transylvanian vampire. Here is a tale in which the kinship appears broadly marked. On the atoll of Penrhyn, then still partly savage, a certain chief was long the salutary terror of the natives.
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