f, for there was trouble in hand; and, all at once,
the man of Haamau was seized, and his head and arm stricken from his
body, the head at one sweep of his own newly sharpened axe. In the first
alert, the girl escaped among the cotton; and Mr. Stewart, having thrust
the wife into the house and locked her in from the outside, supposed the
affair was over. But the business had not passed without noise, and it
reached the ears of an older girl who had loitered by the way, and who
now came hastily down the valley, crying as she came for her father.
Her, too, they seized and beheaded; I know not what they had done with
the axe, it was a blunt knife that served their butcherly turn upon the
girl; and the blood spurted in fountains and painted them from head to
foot. Thus horrible from crime, the party returned to Atuona, carrying
the heads to Moipu. It may be fancied how the feast broke up; but it is
notable that the guests were honourably suffered to retire. These passed
back through Taahauku in extreme disorder; a little after the valley
began to be overrun with shouting and triumphing braves; and a letter of
warning coming at the same time to Mr. Stewart, he and his Chinamen took
refuge with the Protestant missionary in Atuona. That night the store
was gutted, and the bodies cast in a pit and covered with leaves. Three
days later the schooner had come in; and things appearing quieter, Mr.
Stewart and the captain landed in Taahauku to compute the damage and to
view the grave, which was already indicated by the stench. While they
were so employed, a party of Moipu's young men, decked with red flannel
to indicate martial sentiments, came over the hills from Atuona, dug up
the bodies, washed them in the river, and carried them away on sticks.
That night the feast began.

Those who knew Mr. Stewart before this experience declare the man to be
quite altered. He stuck, however, to his post; and somewhat later, when
the plantation was already well established, and gave employment to
sixty Chinamen and seventy natives, he found himself once more in
dangerous times. The men of Haamau, it was reported, had sworn to
plunder and erase the settlement; letters came continually from the
Hawaiian missionary, who acted as intelligence department; and for six
weeks Mr. Stewart and three other whites slept in the cotton-house at
night in a rampart of bales, and (what was their best defence)
ostentatiously practised rifle-shooting by day upon t