A frightening noise was heard in the room or in that part of the house, followed by sounds and movements of a struggle, and in the morning gouts of blood were on the walls. In Moorea, near Tahiti, I met an educated Englishman, there twenty-five years, who said that on analysis the blood proved to be human. A cynic in most things, he would not deny that he believed the circumstance supernatural.
The tupapau had many manifestations: knocks at doors and on thatched roofs, cries of sorrow and of hate. White it was in the night, and often hovering over the house or the grave. It might be that the Ghost Bird, the burong-hantu, a reality which is white, and whose wings make little or no noise when flying, was the foundation of this phantom.
In the meanwhile the schooner Morning Star had gone to Tikei for cargo. Lying Bill was to anchor off the pass of Takaroa in a few days on his voyage to Tahiti and to send ashore a boat for me. For nine nights the vigil was kept by the grave of Mapuhi. About four o’clock each morning the ward by the grave was abandoned, and Nohea threw himself wearily on his mat near me. Only one time, on the last evening, I questioned him about the tupapau, and then realized my discourtesy; it was for him to initiate this subject.
“Have you heard or seen anything rima atua nianatura? Anything by the hand of the spirit?”
Nohea wrapped himself more tightly in his quilt, and his answer came from under it:
“This morning I heard a scratching. This is our last night, thank the gods. I think it was the tupapau saying farewell. We never look at the grave.”
About two the next morning Nohea shook me.
“The Fetia Taiao is off the passage,” he said.
He had heard in the still air the faint slap of her canvas as she jibed, I thought, but that could not have been, as she was too far away. His awareness was not of the ear or eyes, but something different—the keenness of the conscious and unconscious, which had preserved the Paumotuan race in an environment which had meant starvation and death to any other people.
I had my possessions already on the schooner, and, forbidding Nohea to wait with me at the mole, I embraced him and left him. A wish to look at the grave took hold of me, and I walked along the path to it. The sun, though below the horizon, was lessening the sombrous color of the small hours, and I could discern vaguely the outline of the walled burial-ground. The splash of oars in the water and the rattle of rowlocks warned me of the approach of the boat for me, but I still had five minutes.