death should
follow, and now let us unite."

The god did not like his son-in-law and tried various ways
to destroy him, but his wife Puapae always helped him out of
the scrape, one time even making him cut her into two and
throw her into the sea to be eaten by a fish and find a ring
the god had lost and asked him to get. She was afterward
cast ashore with the ring; but Siati had not even kept
awake, and she scolded him for it. To save his life, she
subsequently performed several other miracles, in one of
which her father and sister were drowned in the sea. Then
she said to Siati: "My father and sister are dead, and all
on account of my love to you; you may go now and visit your
family and friends while I remain here, but see that you do
not behave unseemly." He went, visited his friends, and
forgot Puapae. He tried to marry again, but Puapae came and
stood on the other side. The chief called out, "Which is
your wife, Siati?" "The one on the right side." Puapae then
broke silence with, "Ah, Siati, you have forgotten all I did
for you;" and off she went. Siati remembered it all, darted
after her crying, and then fell down dead.

Apart from the amusing "suddenness" of the proposal and the marriage,
this tale is of interest as indicating that among the lower races
woman has--as many observations indicate--a greater capacity for
conjugal attachment than man.

The courtship scene cited above indicates an instinctive knowledge of
the strategic value of coyness and feigned displeasure. The following
story, which I condense from the versified form in which Turner gives
it, would seem to be a sort of masculine warning to women against the
danger and folly of excessive coyness, so inconvenient to the men:

Once there were two sisters, Sinaleuuna and Sinaeteva, who
wished they had a brother. Their wish was gratified; a boy
was born to their parents, but they brought him up apart,
and the sisters never saw him till one day, when he had
grown up, he was sent to them with some food. The girls were
struck with his beauty.

Afterwards they sat down and filled into a bamboo bottle the
liquid shadow of their brother. A report had come to them of
Sina, a Fijian girl who was so beautiful that all the swells
were running after her. Hearing this, and being anxious to
get a wife for