ble of the pearl and the nameless-animal shall be repeated in the
Taufusi swamp. No! I shall make of this war a ladder, and reach glory or
die and to that I am determined as never was man before. If I come back
it shall be as one famous for prowess, bearing heads that I have taken,
and with chiefs eager to adopt me. Thus shall I return, an eat-bush no
longer nor despised, but a David who has slain his Goliath, with the
multitude applauding, and the greatest of the Tuamasanga vying to give
me the title of their son. Or, if not that, then shall I claim the land
God withholds not from every man, nay, not from the poorest or the
lowest, and the name of that land is the grave."

At this Evanitalina sobbed, and clung pitifully to O'olo, and pressed
his head to her bosom, unmindful of decorum, and so consumed by misery
she was like a person in a fit. O'olo, too, was suffocated with sadness,
for it seemed a dreadful thing to die and be cast blood-stained into a
pit, he that was so handsome, and in the flood of his youth, with
perhaps his dissevered head tossing in the air amid shouts and triumph.
Indeed, so lost was he in wretchedness that he was taken unawares by
Samuelu on his way inland from a deacons' meeting, who, convulsed,
seized a coconut branch, and ran at him, crying: "Let there be a going,
thou worthless one! Fly, thou of the Belial family, and be quick with
it, else I shall whip thee hence like a cur!" And with that he whipped
and whipped at O'olo, departing, for the Tongan was too mannerly to
strike a clergyman, and one so greatly his senior, though his spirit
smarted worse than his body at the insult. Thus he passed from the sight
of Evanitalina, like a horse being chased from a bread-fruit plantation,
with no time to look back, or wave with his hand a last greeting.

He marched the same day with the Vaiala contingent under the high-chief
Asi, and that night, shivering on the wet ground, O'olo had his first
taste of war. As to it he had many misconceptions, not reckoning on the
severity of the rule, or the trifling importance attached to a Tongan,
however lionlike his heart. He saw that he was one of many, a grain in a
heap of sand, who might at an order be kept in the rear, and never hear
the whistle of a bullet, or earn the chance of distinction. In the army,
too, little thought was taken of food, so that one banana was given for
breakfast, and for dinner a coconut, which O'olo found hard, he having
always been