e to have a coffin made as
quickly as possible and send it ashore; and then, at a glance from
Varua, who smiled a grave approval as she listened to his orders, he
followed her and the man she called Taku into the smaller of the two
houses.

Round about the inside walls of this ancient dwelling of a forgotten
race were placed a number of seamen's chests made of cedar and camphor
wood--the LARES and PENATES of most Polynesian houses. The gravelled
floor was covered with prettily-ornamented mats of FALA (the
screw-palm).

Seating herself, with Taku the Sailor, on the mats, Varua motioned the
captain to one of the boxes, and then told him a tale that moved
him--rough, fierce, and tyrannical as was his nature--to the deepest
pity.

* * * * *

III

"It is not yet twenty days since the fighting PAHI AFI (steamer) came
here, and we of Mataveri saw the boat full of armed men land on the
beach at Hagaroa. Filled with fear were we; but yet as we had done no
wrong we stood on the beach to welcome. And, ere the armed men had left
the boat, we knew them to be the SIPANIOLA from Chili--the same as
those that came here ten years ago in three ships, and seized and bound
three hundred and six of our men, and carried them away for slaves to
the land of the Tae Manu, and of whom none but four ever returned to
Rapa-nui. And then we trembled again."

(She spoke of the cruel outrage of 1862, when three Peruvian
slave-ships took away over three hundred islanders to perish on the
guano-fields of the Chincha Islands).

"The chief of the ship was a little man, and he called out to us in the
tongue of Chili, 'Have no fear,' and took a little gun from out its
case of skin that hung by his side, and giving it to a man in the boat,
stepped over to us, and took our hands in his.

"'Is there none among ye that speak my tongue?' he said quickly.

"Now, this man here, Taku the Sailor, speaketh the tongue of Chili, but
he feared to tell it, lest they might take him away for a sailor; so he
held his lips tight.

"Then I, who for six years dwelt with English people at Tahiti, was
pushed forward by those behind me and made to talk in English; and lo!
the little man spoke in your tongue even as quick as he did in that of
Chili. And then he told us that he came for Farani [Frank].

* * * * *

"Now this Farani was a young white man of PERETANIA (England), big and
strong. He came to us a year and a half ago. He was rich, and had with
him chests