d plunged on across the wood
for the unpeopled quarter of the island and the long, desert beach,
where he might rage to and fro unseen, and froth out the vials of his
wrath, fear, and humiliation. Doubtless in the curses that he there
uttered to the bursting surf and the tropic birds, the name of the
_Kaupoi_--the rich man--was frequently repeated. I had made him the
laughing-stock of the village in the affair of the king's dumplings; I
had brought him by my machinations into disgrace and the immediate
jeopardy of his days; last, and perhaps bitterest, he had found me there
by the way to spy upon him in the hour of his disorder.

Time passed, and we saw no more of him. The season of the full moon came
round, when a man thinks shame to lie sleeping; and I continued until
late--perhaps till twelve or one in the morning--to walk on the bright
sand and in the tossing shadow of the palms. I played, as I wandered, on
a flageolet, which occupied much of my attention; the fans overhead
rattled in the wind with a metallic chatter; and a bare foot falls at
any rate almost noiseless on that shifting soil. Yet when I got back to
Equator Town, where all the lights were out, and my wife (who was still
awake, and had been looking forth) asked me who it was that followed me,
I thought she spoke in jest. "Not at all," she said. "I saw him twice as
you passed, walking close at your heels. He only left you at the corner
of the maniap'; he must be still behind the cook-house." Thither I
ran--like a fool, without any weapon--and came face to face with the
cook. He was within my tapu-line, which was death in itself; he could
have no business there at such an hour but either to steal or to kill;
guilt made him timorous; and he turned and fled before me in the night
in silence. As he went I kicked him in that place where honour lies, and
he gave tongue faintly like an injured mouse. At the moment I dare say
he supposed it was a deadly instrument that touched him.

What had the man been after? I have found my music better qualified to
scatter than to collect an audience. Amateur as I was, I could not
suppose him interested in my reading of the "Carnival of Venice," or
that he would deny himself his natural rest to follow my variations on
"The Ploughboy." And whatever his design, it was impossible I should
suffer him to prowl by night among the houses. A word to the king, and
the man were not, his case being far beyond pardon. But it is one thin