At last the blind man, scared by his threats, started to walk away in the slow, halting way of the sightless, and attracted Great Night Moth's attention. He picked up his new gun and while all were petrified with fear of being the target, he shot the blind man so that his body fell into the oven in which the pig had been baked. The people could only laugh loudly, if not heartily, as if pleased by the joke.
In Hana-teio a man in a cocoanut-tree gathering nuts was ordered to come down by Great Night Moth who was passing on a boar hunt. The man became confused. His limbs did not cling to the tree as usual. He was fearful and could make no motion.
“Poponohoo! Ve mai! A haa tata! Come down quickly!” yelled the chief.
The poor wretch could not obey. He saw the gun and knew the chief. Great Night Moth brought him down a corpse.
There was no punishment for him. The French held him accountable only for deeds against their sovereignty. A superstition that he was protected by the gods, combined with his strength and desperate courage, made him immune from vengeance by the islanders.
These were incidents Le Brunnec knew from witnesses, but it was Many Pieces of Tattooing who told the ancestry of Great Night Moth.
“Pohue-toa (Male Package) uncle of Earth Worm, was prince of Taaoa and father of this man,” said Many Pieces. “He was one of the biggest men of these islands, and the strongest in Taaoa. He lived for a while in Hana-menu.
“There was no war then between the valley of Atuona and that of Hana-menu; the people of both crossed the mountains and visited one another. But it was discovered in Atuona that a number of the people were missing. Some had gone to Hana-menu and never reached there, others had disappeared on their way home. The chief of Atuona sent a messenger who was tapu in all valleys, to count the people of this valley who were in Hana-menu and to warn them to return in a band, armed with spears. Meanwhile the priest went to the High Place and spoke to the gods, and after two days and nights he returned and said that the danger was at the pass between the valleys; that a demon had seized the people there.
“The demon was Male Package. You know the precipice there is near the sky, and at the very height is a puta faiti, a narrow place. There Male Package lay in wait, armed with his spear and club, and hidden in the grass. He was hungry for meat, for Long Pig, and when he saw some one he fancied, he threw his spear or struck them down with the u'u. He took the corpse on his back and carried it to his hut in the upper valley of Hana-menu as I would carry a sack of copra. There he ate what he would, alone.
“Oh, there were those who knew, but they were afraid to tell. After it became known to the people of Atuona, to the kin of those who had been eaten, they did nothing. Male Package was like Great Night Moth later—a man whom the gods fought for.”