r. And I can understand."

* Liverpool.

**Lit, dear crony.

He drank the liquor neat, and then washed it down with a cupful of
water.

"_Tapa!_ Ah, the good, sweet grog! And see, above us is the round moon,
and here be we three. We three--two young and strong, one whose blood
is getting cold. Ah, I will talk, and this boy, Temana, will learn that
Pakia is no boasting old liar, but a true man." Then, suddenly dropping
the Nukufetau dialect in which he had hitherto spoken, he said quietly
in English--

"I told you I could speak other languages beside my own. It is true, for
I can talk English and Spanish." Then he went back into native: "But
I am not a vain old man. These people here are fools. They think that
because on Sundays they dress like white men and go to church five times
in one day, and can read and write in Samoan, that they are as clever
as white men. Bah! they are fools, fools! Where are the strong men of my
youth? Where are the thousand and two hundred people who, when my father
was a boy, lived upon the shores of this lagoon? They are gone, gone!"

"True, Pakfa. They are gone."

"Aye, they are perished like the dead leaves. And once when I said in
the hearing of the _kaupule_ (head men) that in the days of the _po-uri_
(heathen times) we were a great people and better off than we are now, I
was beaten by my own grand-daughter, and fined ten dollars for speaking
of such things, and made to work on the road for two months. But it is
true--it is true. Where are the people now? They are dead, perished;
there are now but three hundred left of the thousand and two hundred who
lived in my father's time. And of those that are left, what are they?
They are weak and eaten up with strange diseases. The men cannot hunt
and fish as men hunted and fished in my father's time.

"_Tah!_ they are women, and the women are men, for now the man must work
for the woman, so that she can buy hats and boots and calicoes, and
dress like a white woman. Give me more grog, for these things fill my
belly with bitterness, and the grog is sweet. Ah! I shall tell you many
things to-night."

"Tell me of them, old man. See, the moon is warm to our skins. And as we
drink, we shall eat. Temana here shall bring us food. And we shall talk
till the sun shines over the tops of the trees on Motu Luga. I
would learn of the old times before this island became _lotu_
(Christianised)."

"_Oi._ I will tell you. I am now but as a