no great man to lead. Yet the drums beat at night, and the fighting
men came. You know how the drums speak?"

His face clouded, and his eyes flashed against their foil of
tattooing.

"'_Ohe te pepe! Ohe te pepe! Ohe te pepe!_' said the drum called
Peepee. '_Titiutiuti! Titiutiuti!_' said the drum called Umi.
_Aue!_ Then the warriors came! They stood in the High Place at the
head of the valley. Mehitete, the chief, spoke to them. He said that
they should go to Atuona, and bring back bodies for feasting. Many
nights the drums beat, and the chief talked much, but there was no
war.

"The High Priest went to the _Pekia_ again, and when he came away he
ran without stopping for two days and a night, till he fell without
breath, as one dead, and foam was on his mouth. The gods were angry.
Still there was no war.

"Then came Tomefitu from Vait-hua. He was chief of that valley,
having been adopted by a woman of Vait-hua, but his father and his
mother were of Taaoa. He had heard of the slaying of Beaten to Death,
his kinsman, and he was hot in the bowels. _Aue!_ The thunder of the
heavens was as the voice of Tomefitu when angered. The earth groaned
where he walked. He knew the _Farani_ and their tricks. He had guns
from the whalers, and he was afraid of nothing save the Ghost Woman
of the Night. Again the warriors came to the High Place, and now
there were many drums."

Kahuiti sprang to his feet. He struck the corner post of the hut
with his fist. His eyes burned.

"'Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe! Kaputuhe!
Teputuhe! Teputuhe! Teputuhe!
Tuti! Tuti! Tutuituiti!"

"That was what the war drums said. The sound of them rolled from the
Pekia, and every man who could throw a spear or hold a war-club came
to their call."

Kahuiti's soul was rapt in the story. His voice had the deep tone of
the violoncello, powerful, vibrant, and colorful. He had lived in
that strange past, and the things he recalled were precious memories.

The sound of the drums, as he echoed them in the curious tone-words
of Marquesan, thrilled me through. I heard the booming of the
ten-foot war-drums, their profound and far-reaching call like the
roaring of lions in the jungle. I saw the warriors with their spears
of cocoanut-wood and their deadly clubs of ironwood carved and
shining with oil, their baskets of polished stones slung about their
waists, and their slings of fiber, dancing in the sacred grove of
the Pekia, its shadows lighted by the blaze o