ve on the plateau
of Ahao.

"Their _popoi_ pits are the wallows of the wild boar; on their
_paepaes_ sit the wild white dogs. The horned cattle wander where
they walked. _Hee i te fenua ke!_ They are gone, and the stranger
shall have their graves."

CHAPTER XIX

A feast to the men of Motopu; the making of _kava_, and its drinking;
the story of the Girl Who Lost Her Strength.

The Vagabond, Kivi, who lived near the High Place, came down to my
_paepae_ one evening to bid me come to a feast given in Atuona
Valley to the men of Motopu, who had been marvelously favored by the
god of the sea.

Months of storms, said Kivi, had felled many a stately palm of
Taka-Uka and washed thousands of ripe cocoanuts into the bay, whence
the current that runs swift across the channel had swept the
fruitage of the winds straight to the inlet of Motopu, on the island
of Tahuata. The men of that village, with little effort to themselves,
had reaped richly.

Now they were come, bringing back the copra dried and sacked. Seven
hundred francs they had received for a ton of it from Kriech, the
German merchant of Taka-Uka, from whose own groves it had been
stolen by the storms.

On the morrow, their canoes laden with his goods, they would sail
homeward. One day they had tarried to raft redwood planks of
California from the schooner in the bay to the site of Kivi's new
house. So that night in gratitude he would make merry for them. There
would be much to eat, and there would be _kava_ in plenty. He prayed
that I would join them in this feast, which would bring back the
good days of the _kava_-drinking, which were now almost forgotten.

[Illustration: Kivi, the _kava_ drinker with the _hetairae_ of
the valley]

[Illustration: A pool in the jungle]

I rose gladly from the palm-shaded mat on which I had lain vainly
hoping for a breath of coolness in the close heat of the day, and
girded the red _pareu_ more neatly about my loins. Often I had heard
of the _kava_-drinking days before the missionaries had insisted on
outlawing that drink beloved of the natives. The traders had added
their power to the virtuous protests of the priests, for _kava_ cost
the islanders nothing, while rum, absinthe, and opium could be sold
them for profit. So _kava_-drinking had been suppressed, and after
decades of knowing more powerful stimulants and narcotics, the
natives had lost their taste for the gentler beverage of their
forefathers.

The French