is youth, was good
enough for him! Agilely he caught aside a leafy branch overhanging
the trail, and in the flecks of sunshine and shade his naked, strong
brown limbs were like the smooth stems of an aged manzanita tree.

He had not the scaly skin or the bloodshot eyes of the _kava_
debauchee, whose excesses paint upon their victim their own vivid
signs. I remembered a figure caught by the rays of my flashlight one
might on a dark trail--a withered creature whose whole face and body
had turned a dull green, and at the memory of that grisly phantom I
shuddered. But Broken Plate, on the trail ahead, called back to us
that he had found a goodly bush, and without more words we clambered
to it.

The _kava_, a variety of the pepper-plant, grows to more than six
feet in height, and the specimen we had found thrust above our heads
its many jointed branches rustling with large, flat leaves. The
decoction, Kivi explained, comes from the root, and we set to work to
dig it.

It was huge, like a gigantic yam, and after we had torn it from the
stubborn soil it taxed the strength and agility of two of us to
carry it to the _paepae_ of Broken Plate, where the feast was to be.
A dozen older women, skilled in grating the breadfruit for _popoi_
making, awaited us there, squatting in a ring on the low platform.
The root, well washed in the river, was laid on the stones, and the
women attacked it with cowry-shells, scraping it into particles like
slaw. It was of the hardness of ginger, and filled a large _tanoa_,
or wooden trough of ironwood.

The scraping had hardly well begun, while Broken Plate and I rested
from our labors, smoking pandanus-leaf cigarettes in the shade, when
up the road came half a dozen of the most beautiful young girls of
the village, clothed in all their finery.

Teata, with all the arrogance of the acclaimed beauty, walked first,
wearing a tight-fitting gown with insertions of fishnet, evidently
copied from some stray fashion-book. She wore it as her only garment,
and through the wide meshes of the novel lace appeared her skin, of
the tint of the fresh-cooked breadfruit. She passed us with a
coquettish toss of her shapely head and took her place among her
envious companions.

They sat on mats around the iron-wood trough and chewed the grated
root, which, after thorough mastication, they spat out into
banana-leaf cups. This chewing of the Aram-root is the very being of
_kava_ as a beverage, for it is a fermen