"If you ask the good misinari doctor, he will tell you," he answered. "As for me, I have nothing to do with devils. I am a very old man, and I want to go to heaven.
"You will go to-night, old scorpion-head, if you do not tell me everything I want to know," remarked Vaiti. Her tone was pleasant, but there was a flavour of something else below the pleasantness that caused Sona, literally and figuratively, to sit up.
"I tell, I tell, high chieftainess," he stammered eagerly. "The thing is known to all the people on the island—even the white people. It happened only last year, and it is as true as the Good Book. It was the foolish man from Mua way, whom they called a witch-doctor—and every one knows that such a thing does not exist, high chieftainess; but they said he was that thing, and he said so himself, because he was proud and mad. Now, we all know that there are many devils on Niué, and that the misinaris never were able to drive them all away. And there is a very bad devil on that road to Mua, right where the six palm-trees stand up by themselves among the graves. It is powerless in the day, but at night there is no Niué man who would dare to go there. Sometimes the white traders will ride past the place coming home in the dark, but it is a true thing that their horses will often shy and bolt when they come near to the home of the devil, and no man can say why; indeed, the devils, for the most part, do not have power over the 'papalangi.'
"So this witch-doctor, as he called himself, said that he did not fear the devil, and he would go and stay the night among the graves, thinking that because of that all the people in the island would believe in him, and give him many pigs and yams for fear of his 'mana.' So he went to the devil-place, and all night he stayed, but in the morning he did not come back at all. And by-and-by all the people of his village went together to look for him. And they found him lying on the road, all dead, and his face was black and his body twisted up. So the people brought him to the misinari doctor, and he said that he could not make him alive again. And the traders said, 'What is the kind of this death? We do not know it, though we are white men and know everything.' But the misinari doctor did not know. And they buried him, and that is all, high chieftainess."
Vaiti smoked thoughtfully. She had heard something of the tale before, and Sona's story did not vary from the version that was generally current about the island. She thought, on the whole, that she believed in it. There was no doubt that many of the white people gave it credit, though a few of them declared the man must have died in a drunken fit. A paper in Australia had published an account of the mysterious incident, and the spiritualistic set in Sydney were so deeply interested in it that a letter of inquiry from a psychical research society had been sent up to the island, inquiring into the matter. But it happened that the trader to whom the letter was addressed had committed suicide a good many months earlier, and excellent onions and pumpkins (much appreciated by his successor) were growing green upon his grave by the time the letter reached the island. So the inquiry was never answered.
Yes, on the whole, Vaiti thought she believed the story. That a similar result would follow in the case of a "papalangi" (white man) who followed the deceased magician's example she did not, however, believe. She thought it very likely, however, that mischief of one kind or another would result.... And if the worst should chance to come about....
Vaiti took another cigar.
"What does your misinari say?" she asked. "He is not the right sort of misinari, it is true, but still, he should know more about devils than the traders."
"Our good misinari was not here when it happened," replied Sona in a pious tone. "It was the doctor misinari. Our own good misinari says that devils cannot do harm to any but bad men."
Vaiti reflected, her eyes on the floor. She really had some respect, in an odd, upside-down kind of way, for missionary opinion. It is bred in the bone with the younger generation of Eastern Pacific islanders.