can, if they
choose, give themselves up to the delights of idleness; the villages are
full of ornamental plants. Yet on the other hand we are informed that
life beneath the ground is very like life above it: people work and
marry, they squabble and wrangle, they fall sick and even die, just as
people do on earth. Souls which die the second death in Lamboam are
changed into vermin, such as ants and worms; however, others say that
they turn into wood-spirits, who do men a mischief in the fields. It is
not so easy as is commonly supposed to effect an entrance into the
spirit-land. You must pass a river, and even when you have crossed it
you will be very likely to suffer from the practical jokes which the
merry old ghosts play on a raw newcomer. A very favourite trick of
theirs is to send him up a pandanus tree to look for fruit. If he is
simple enough to comply, they catch him by the legs as he is swarming up
the trunk and drag him down, so that his whole body is fearfully
scratched, if not quite ripped up, by the rough bark. That is why people
put valuable things with the dead in the grave, in order that their
ghosts on arrival in Lamboam may have the wherewithal to purchase the
good graces of the facetious old stagers.[478]

[Sidenote: Return of the ghosts to earth, sometimes in the form of
serpents.]

However, even when the ghosts have succeeded in effecting a lodgment in
Lamboam, they are not strictly confined to it. They can break bounds at
any moment and return to the upper air. This they do particularly when
any of their surviving relations is at the point of death. Ghosts of
deceased kinsfolk and of others gather round the parting soul and attend
it to the far country. Yet sometimes, apparently, the soul sets out
alone, for the anxious relatives will call out to it, "Miss not the
way." But ghosts visit their surviving friends at other times than at
the moment of death. For example, some families possess the power of
calling up spirits in the form of serpents from the vasty deep. The
spirits whom they evoke are usually those of persons who have died quite
lately; for such ghosts cannot return to earth except in the guise of
serpents. In this novel shape they naturally feel shy and hide under a
mat. They come out only in the dusk of the evening or the darkness of
night and sit on the shelf for pots and dishes under the roof. They have
lost the faculty of speech and can express themselves only in whistles.
These whi