Before I die, I should like a drink of
water.' His father made a surly remark, and said, as he ran to fetch it
in a leaf doubled up, 'You have been a considerable trouble during your
life, and it appears that you are going to trouble us equally at your
death.' The father returned with the water, which the son drank off, and
then looked up into a tree covered with tough vines, saying he should
prefer being strangled with a vine to being smothered in the grave. His
father became excessively angry, and, spreading the mat at the bottom of
the grave, told the son to die _faka tamata_ (like a man), when he
stepped into the grave, which was not more than four feet deep, and lay
down on his back with the whale's tooth in his hands, which were clasped
across his belly. The spare sides of the mats were lapped over him so as
to prevent the earth from getting to his body, and then about a foot of
earth was shovelled in upon him as quickly as possible. His father
stamped it immediately down solid, and called out in a loud voice, '_Sa
tiko, sa tiko_ (You are stopping there, you are stopping there),'
meaning 'Good-bye, good-bye.' The son answered with a very audible
grunt, and then about two feet more earth was shovelled in and stamped
as before by the loving father, and '_Sa tiko_' called out again, which
was answered by another grunt, but much fainter. The grave was then
completely filled up, when, for curiosity's sake, I said myself, '_Sa
tiko_' but no answer was given, although I fancied, or really did see,
the earth crack a little on the top of the grave. The father and mother
then turned back to back on the middle of the grave, and, having dropped
some kind of leaves from their hands, walked away in opposite directions
towards a running stream of water hard by, where they and all the rest
washed themselves, and made me wash myself, and then we returned to the
town, where there was a feast prepared. As soon as the feast was over
(it being then dark), began the dance and uproar which are always
carried on either at natural or violent deaths."[680]

[Sidenote: The readiness of the Fijians to die seems to have been partly
a consequence of their belief in immortality.]

The readiness with which the Fijians submitted to or even sought death
appears to have been to some extent a direct consequence of their belief
in immortality and of their notions as to the state of the soul
hereafter. Thus we are informed by an early observer of this