"_Aumia mate i havaii_" said Exploding Eggs, approaching to build
the fire. Literally he said, "Aumia is dead and gone below," for the
Marquesans locate the spirit world below the earth's surface, as
they do the soul below the belt.

The wailing was accompanied shortly by a sound of hammering on boards.

"The corpse goes into the coffin," said Exploding Eggs. The first
nail had been driven but a moment after Aumia's last breath.

All day the neighborhood was melancholy with the cries from the house.
All the lamentations were in a certain tone, as if struck from the
same instrument by the hand of sorrow. Each visitor to the house
shrieked in the same manner, and all present accompanied her, so
that for ten minutes after each new mourner arrived a chorus of loud
wails and moans assailed my ears. I had never known such a
heart-rending exhibition of grief.

But the sorrow of these friends of Aumia was not genuine. It could
not be; it was too dramatic. When they left the house the mourners
laughed and lit cigarettes and pipes. If no new visitor came they
fell to chatting and smoking, but the sight of a fresh and unharrowed
person started them off again in their mechanical, though
nerve-racking, cry.

I had known Aumia well, and at noon, desiring to observe the
proprieties, I stepped upon the _paepae_ of her home.

"She loved the _Menike!_" shouted the old women in chorus, and they
threw themselves upon me and smelt me and made as if I had been one
of the dead's husbands. The followed me up the trail to my cabin and
sat on my _paepae_ wailing and shrieking. It was some time before I
realized that their poignant sorrow should force consolation from me.
There was not a moan as the rum went round.

I had puzzled at the exact repetition of their plaint. Harrowing as
it was, the sounds were almost like a recitation of the alphabet. A
woman who had adopted me as her nephew said they called it the
"_Ue haaneinei_" That, literally, is "to make a weeping on the side."
The etiquette of it was intricate and precise. Each vowel was
memorized with exactness. It ran, as my adopted aunt repeated it
over her shell of consolation, thus:

"Ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke ke!
A a a a a a a a a a a a a a!
E e e e e e e e e e e e e e e!
I i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i i!
O o o o o o o o o o o o o o o!
U u u u u u u u u u u u u u u!"

To omit a vowel, to say too many, or to mix their order, would be
disrespect to the spirit of the