ion, but
which a deeper knowledge of native thought would reveal to him in their
true character as far-seeing measures designed to defeat the nefarious
art of the sorcerer.[621]

[Sidenote: Black magic working without any personal relic of the victim.
The ghost-shooter.]

Unfortunately, however, an adept in the black art can work his fell
purpose even without any personal relic of his victim. In the Banks'
Islands, for example, he need only procure a bit of human bone or a
fragment of some lethal weapon, it may be a splinter of a club or a chip
of an arrow, which has killed somebody. This he wraps up in the proper
leaves, recites over it the appropriate charm, and plants it secretly in
the path along which his intended victim is expected to pass. The ghost
of the man who owned the bone in his life or perished by the club or the
arrow, is now lurking like a lion in the path; and if the poor fellow
strolls along it thinking no evil, the ghost will spring at him and
strike him with disease. The charm is perfectly efficient if the man
does come along the path, but clearly it misses fire if he does not. To
remedy this defect in the apparatus a sorcerer sometimes has recourse to
a portable instrument, a sort of pocket pistol, which in the Banks'
Islands is known as a ghost-shooter. It is a bamboo tube, loaded not
with powder and shot, but with a dead man's bone and other magical
ingredients, over which the necessary spell has been crooned. Armed with
this deadly weapon the sorcerer has only to step up to his unsuspecting
enemy, whip out the pocket pistol, uncork the muzzle by removing his
thumb from the orifice, and present it at the victim; the fatal
discharge follows in an instant and the man drops to the ground. The
ghost in the pistol has done his work. Sometimes, however, an accident
happens. The marksman misses his victim and hits somebody else. This
occurred, for example, not very many years ago in the island of Mota. A
man named Isvitag was waiting with his ghost-shooter to pop at his
enemy, but in his nervous excitement he let fly too soon, just as a
woman with a child on her hip stepped across the path. The shot, or
rather the ghost, hit the child point-blank, and it was his sister's
child, his own next of kin! You may imagine the distress of the
affectionate uncle at this deplorable miscarriage. To prevent
inflammation of the wound he, with great presence of mind, plunged his
pocket pistol in water, and this time