“Now Tahia was a good wife, and loved her beautiful white man; all that a wife could do she did, cooking his food, bathing his feet, rolling cigarettes for him all day long as he lay upon the mats. But her father in time became troubled, and there was grumbling among the people, for the white man would not work.
“He would not climb the palm to bring down the nuts; he lay and laughed on his paepae in the Meinui, the season of breadfruit, when all were busy; and when they brought him rusty old muskets to care for, he turned his back upon them. Sometimes he fished, going out in a canoe that Tahia paddled, and making her fix the bait on the hook, but he caught few fish.
“‘Aue te hanahana, aua ho'i te kaikai,’ said his father-in-law. ‘He who will not labor, neither shall he eat.’ But the white man laughed and ate and labored not.
“A season passed and another, and there came a time of little rain. The bananas were few, and the breadfruit were not plentiful. One evening, therefore, the old men met in conference, and this was their decision: ‘Rats are becoming a nuisance, and we will abate them.’
“Next morning the father sent Tahia on an errand to another valley. Then men began to dig a large oven in the earth before Tahia's house, where the white man lay on the mats at ease. Presently he looked and wondered and looked again. And at length he rose and came down to the oven, saying, ‘What's up?’
“‘Plenty kaikai. Big pig come by and by,’ they said.
“So he stood waiting while they dug, and no pig came. Then he said, ‘Where is the pig?’ And at that moment the u'u crashed upon his skull, so that he fell without life and lay in the oven. Wood was piled about him, and he was baked, and there was feasting in Hanamenu.
“In the twilight Tahia came over the hills, weary and hungry, and asked for her white man. ‘He has gone to the beach,’ they said.
“He will return soon, therefore sit and eat, my daughter,” said her father, and gave her the meat wrapped in leaves. So she ate heartily, and waited for her husband. And all the feasters laughed at her, so that little by little she learned the truth. She said nothing, but went away in the darkness.
“And it is written, Haabunai, that searchers for the mei came upon her next day in the upper valley, and she was hanging from a tall palm-tree with a rope of purau about her neck.”