attachment to rum. With Wilson's eagerly offered help, Porter
made friends with the people of Tai-o-hae, established a camp on
shore, and set about revictualing his fleet.

The tribes of Tai-o-hae, or Tieuhoy, as Porter called it, were
annoyed by the combative Hapaa tribe, or collection of tribes, which
dwelt in a nearby valley, and these doughty warriors came within
half a mile of the American camp, cut down the breadfruit trees, and
made hideous gestures of derision at the white men. In response,
Porter landed a six-pound gun, tremendously heavy, and said that if
the Tai-o-hae tribe would carry it to the top of a high mountain
overlooking the Hapaa valley, he would drive the Hapaas from the
hills where they stood and threatened to descend.

To Porter's amazement, the Tai-o-hae men, surmounting incredible
difficulties, laid the gun in position, and as the Hapaas scorned
the futile-looking contrivance and declared that they would not make
peace with the whites, Porter sent his first assistant with forty men,
armed with muskets and accompanied by natives carrying these weapons
and ammunition for the cannon.

The battle began with a great roar of exploding gunpowder, and from
the ships the Americans saw their men driving from height to height
the Hapaas, who fought as they retreated, daring the enemy to follow
them. A friendly native bore the American flag and waved it in
triumph as he skipped from crag to crag, well in the rear of the
white men who pursued the fleeing enemy.

In the afternoon the victorious forces descended, carrying five dead.
The Hapaas, fighting with stones flung from slings and with spears,
had taken refuge, to the number of four or five thousand, in a
fortress on the brow of a hill. Not one of them had been wounded, and
from their impassable heights they threw down jeers and showers of
stones upon the retiring Tai-o-haes and their white allies.

This was intolerable. On the second day, with augmented forces, the
Americans stormed the height and took the fort, killing many Hapaas,
who, knowing nothing of the effect of musket bullets, fought till
dead. The wounded were dispatched with war-clubs by the Tai-o-haes,
who dipped their spears in the blood. Wilson said the Tai-o-haes
would eat the corpses. Porter, horrified, interrogated his allies,
who denied any such horrid appetite, so that Porter was not sure
what to believe.

The Hapaas were now become lovers of the whites, and sent a
deputatio