t could he mean? _Puaka_ is pig, _piki_ is to mount or climb,
and _enata_ is man. A great white light beat about my brow. "The pig
men climb?" Could he mean Rozinante, the steed to whom T'yonny had
entrusted me, and who had so basely deserted his trust over a cliff?

I hurried on incredulous, and, in a clearing where there were three
or four horses, beheld the suicide grazing upon the luscious grass.
He had lost much cuticle, and the saddle was in shreds, but the
_puaka piki enata_ was evidently in fairly good health.

The old man had slowly followed me down the trail, and he stood
within the doorway of a rude hut, blinking in the sun as he watched
my movements. In the houses were altogether fewer than a dozen people.
They sat by cocoanut-husk fires, the acrid smoke of which daunted
the _nonos_.

The reason any human beings endure such tortures to remain in this
gloomy, deserted spot can only be the affection the Marquesan has
for his home. Not until epidemics have carried off all but one or
two inhabitants in a valley can those remaining be persuaded to leave
it.

This dozen of the Taipi clan are the remainder of the twenty Ramqe
saw with the heartbroken American. They have clung to their lonely
_paepaes_ despite their poverty of numbers and the ferocity of the
_nonos_. They had clearings with cocoanuts and breadfruit, but
they cared no longer to cultivate them, preferring rather to sit
sadly in the curling fumes and dream of the past. One old man read
aloud the "Gospel of St. John" in Marquesan, and the others
listlessly listened, seeming to drink in little comfort from the
verses, which he recited in the chanting monotone of their _uta_.

Nine miles in length is Typee, from a glorious cataract that leaps
over the dark buttress wall where the mountain bounds the valley, to
the blazing beach. And in all this extent of marvelously rich land,
the one-time fondly cherished abode of the most valiant clan of the
Marquesas, of thousands of men and women whose bodies were as
beautiful as the models for the statues the Greeks made, whose
hearts were generous, and whose minds were eager to learn all good
things, there are now this wretched dozen too old or listless to
gather their own food. In the ruins of a broken and abandoned
_paepae_, in the shadow of an acre-covering banian, I smoked and
asked myself what a Christ would think of the havoc wrought by men
calling themselves Christians.

CHAPTER XXVII

Journey