After
it became known to the people of Atuona, to the kin of those who had
been eaten, they did nothing. Male Package was like Great Night Moth
later--a man whom the gods fought for."

Great Night Moth sat smoking, listening to what was said in the
listless way that lunatics listen, unable to focus his attention,
but gathering in his addled brain that he was being discussed. I
watched him as one does a caged tiger, guessing at the beast's
thoughts and thankful that it can prey no more.

Many Pieces of Tattooing had no tone of horror or regret in his
voice while he recounted the bloody deeds of Mohuho and Pohue-toa,
but smiled, as if he would say that they had occurred under a
different dispensation and were not blameful.

"Was Great Night Moth the real son of Male Package?" I asked.

"Ah, that is to be told," said Many Pieces. "He was his son, yes.
Shall I tell you the tale of how he escaped death at the hands of
his father? _Ea!_ I remember the time well. Menike, you have seen
the rivers big and the cocoanut-trees felled by the flood, but you
have not seen the _ave one_, the time of no food, when the ground is
as dry as the center of a dead tree, and hunger is in the valleys
like the ghost-women that move as mist. There have been many such
periods for the island peoples.

"That two years it did not rain. The breadfruit would not yield. The
grass and plants died. There were no nuts on the palms. The pigs had
no food, and fell in the forest. The banana-trees withered. The
people ate the _popoi_ from the deepest pits, and day and night they
fished. Soon the pits were empty and the people ate roots, bark,
anything. There were fish, but it is hard to live on fish alone.

"Some lay in their canoes and ate the _eva_ and died. The stomachs
of some became empty of thought, and they threw themselves into the
sea. The father of Great Night Moth sent all his children to the
hills. There is always more rain there, and there was some food to be
found. His wife he kept at the fishing, day and night, till she
slept at the paddle, and he himself went to the high plateaus to
hunt for pig.

"For many days he came down weak, having found none. But at last she
came to find baked meat ready for her, and she wept and ate and
thanked him. He had found a certain green spot, he said, where there
were more.

"Many times he brought the meat to her, and she said that the
children should come back to share the food, but he said, 'No. Eat