Great Night Moth sat smoking, listening to what was said in the listless way that lunatics listen, unable to focus his attention, but gathering in his addled brain that he was being discussed. I watched him as one does a caged tiger, guessing at the beast's thoughts and thankful that it can prey no more.
Many Pieces of Tattooing had no tone of horror or regret in his voice while he recounted the bloody deeds of Mohuho and Pohue-toa, but smiled, as if he would say that they had occurred under a different dispensation and were not blameful.
“Was Great Night Moth the real son of Male Package?” I asked.
“Ah, that is to be told,” said Many Pieces. “He was his son, yes. Shall I tell you the tale of how he escaped death at the hands of his father? Ea! I remember the time well. Menike, you have seen the rivers big and the cocoanut-trees felled by the flood, but you have not seen the ave one, the time of no food, when the ground is as dry as the center of a dead tree, and hunger is in the valleys like the ghost-women that move as mist. There have been many such periods for the island peoples.
“That two years it did not rain. The breadfruit would not yield. The grass and plants died. There were no nuts on the palms. The pigs had no food, and fell in the forest. The banana-trees withered. The people ate the popoi from the deepest pits, and day and night they fished. Soon the pits were empty and the people ate roots, bark, anything. There were fish, but it is hard to live on fish alone.
“Some lay in their canoes and ate the eva and died. The stomachs of some became empty of thought, and they threw themselves into the sea. The father of Great Night Moth sent all his children to the hills. There is always more rain there, and there was some food to be found. His wife he kept at the fishing, day and night, till she slept at the paddle, and he himself went to the high plateaus to hunt for pig.
“For many days he came down weak, having found none. But at last she came to find baked meat ready for her, and she wept and ate and thanked him. He had found a certain green spot, he said, where there were more.
“Many times he brought the meat to her, and she said that the children should come back to share the food, but he said, ‘No. Eat! They have plenty.’
“She came from the fishing one day with empty baskets. The sea had been rough, and there were no fish. Her husband had become a surly man, and cruel; he beat her. She said, ‘Is there no pig?’
“‘Pig, you fool!’ said her husband. ‘You have eaten no pig. You have eaten your children. They are all dead.’