“‘Villee,’ I said, and rubbed his back, ‘there is for you perhaps happiness yet. I have talked with the wise old men of the lodge.’
“He raised himself, and fixed his dull eyes on me.
“‘One Kihiputona says that the milk of a woman will work the magic. I can not say, for it is with the gods.’
“The foreigner sprang to his feet.
“‘Come, let us lose no time!’ he cried. ‘It is that or the eva.’
“Marquesans, when tired of life, eat the eva fruit. I made all ready, and, taking my daughter and her babe, with food, and the things of the tattooing, we again went to the hut in the mountains. Together we built it over, and made all ready for the trial.
“‘Remember, foreigner,’ I said, ‘this is all before the Etuá, the rulers of each one’s good and evil. I have never done this, nor even the wisest of us has ought but a faint memory of a memory that once a white man thus was freed to go back to his kin.’
“‘E aha a—no matter,’ he said. ‘There is no choice. Begin!’
“I warned him not to utter a word until I released the tapu. I made all ready. Then I had him lie down, his head fixed in a bamboo section, and I began the long task.”
The sorcerer sighed, and spat through his fingers.