[Illustration: Removing the pig cooked in the _umu_, or native oven]

[Illustration: The _Koina Kai_ or feast in Oomoa]

"_La soupe maigre de missionaire_," murmured the priest.

I led the talk to the work of the mission.

"We have been here thirty-five years," said Pere Olivier, "and I,
thirty. Our order first tried to establish a church at Oomoa, but
failed. You have seen there a stone foundation that supports the
wild vanilla vines? Frere Fesal built that, with a Raratonga
islander who was a good mason. The two cut the stones and shaped them.
The valley of Oomoa was drunk. Rum was everywhere, the palm _namu_
was being made all the time, and few people were ever sober. There
was a Hawaiian Protestant missionary there, and he was not good
friends with Frere Fesal. There was no French authority at Oomoa,
and the strongest man was the law. The whalers were worse than the
natives, and hated the missionaries. One day when the valley was
crazed, a native killed the Raratonga man. You will find the murderer
living on Tahuata now. Frere Fesal buried his assistant, and fled
here.

"That date was about the last Hanavave suffered from cannibalism and
extreme sorcery. The _taua_, the pagan priest, was still powerful,
however, and his gods demanded victims. The men here conspired with
the men of Hanahouua to descend on Oi, a little village by the sea
between here and Oomoa. They had guns of a sort, for the whalers had
brought old and rusty guns to trade with the Marquesans for wood,
fruit, and fish. Frere Fesal learned of the conspiracy, but the men
were drinking rum, and he was helpless. The warriors went stealthily
over the mountains and at night lowered themselves from the cliffs
with ropes made of the _fau_. There were only thirty people left in
Oi, and the enemy came upon them in the dark like the wolf. Only one
man escaped--There he is now, entering the mission. We will ask him
to tell the story."

He stood in the rickety doorway and called, "Tutaiei, come here!" An
old and withered man approached, one-eyed, the wrinkles of his face
and body abscuring the blue patterns of tattooing, a shrunken, but
hideous, scar making a hairless patch on one side of his head.

"I was on the beach pulling up my canoe and taking out the fish I
had speared," said this wreck of a man. "Half the night was spent,
and every one was asleep except me. We were a little company, for
they had killed and eaten most of us, and others had died of