“Now it happened there belonged to Ta’a’s family a girl named Sina, a thin, hungry piece with a canoe-nose like a white man’s, and a face so unsightly that it resembled a pig’s; and if she went anywhere the children would cry after her, ‘Pig-face, Pig-face!’ like that, so that her name of Sina was forgotten, and even members of her family called her unmindfully by the other. Compared to Java, who was tall and beautiful like a daughter of chiefs, this little Sina was no more than a half-grown child; and when she was stripped for bathing, behold, you could count the ribs of her body. But Ta’a brought her every day to Patsy’s house, so that by degrees he became accustomed to the sight of her; and all the time the old one kept telling him that the little Pig-face loved him—which, perhaps, indeed was true, for none of our young men ever looked twice her way, except to laugh, and she might have stayed out all night and no one would have thought to speak against her character. Patsy was kind and gentle to her, as he was to every one save poor Java; and the little Pig-face followed him like a dog, and lay at his feet at night, while he read and read on his front verandah. So slavish was her soul that she would have kissed his feet if he had kicked her, and nothing pleased her so much as to sit beside him when he slept and keep the flies from off his face. In the end, of course, there happened that which Ta’a had long been planning: Patsy took the little Pig-face to live with him, and pacified her father with two kegs of beef and fifteen silver dollars.
“When the news reached Java she was consumed with a frightful anger, and spoke wildly and murderously, like a drunken white man, clinching her fists and kicking with her legs. She set to sharpening a knife upon a stone, and we saw that she meant to cut off the little Pig-face’s nose; for, as thou knowest, Siosi, such is our custom here when one woman wrongs another. She called together all the old ladies of the family, and they took counsel with one another in a secret place, arranging between them a scheme for Sina’s capture. But the little Pig-face was cowardly beyond anything ever before known; she bathed not, neither did she wash nor walk about, but lay all day, trembling and noisome, at Patsy’s feet. Once, indeed, she was nearly caught, when upward of a month had passed and she had grown careless in her watching. In the middle of the night the house was set on fire, and as the two rushed out in confusion, Sina was seized in the arms of a dozen women. Had it not been for the darkness, which made seeing difficult, her canoe-nose would have been swiftly lost to her; but for light they had need to drag her to the burning house, she screaming the while like a hundred pigs. Patsy knew instantly what was happening, and began to fire his pistol in the air as he ran to his partner’s help, giving no thought at all to his perishing house. It was well for the little Pig-face that he did so, for the knife had already sunk below the skin, and a twist would have left her noseless.
“As for the house, it burned and burned until nothing was left of it, though the most of what it held was carried out in safety. The next morning Patsy moved everything down to the devil-house, making of it a fort, with a high fence of wire all round, full of barbs and points for the lacerating of flesh. And the little Pig-face, with her nose tied up in cloths, ran this way and that, helping him with nails, while Java and I lay in a hiding-place and counted her ribs.
“Thou wouldst have thought that Java might now have rested in her anger, for Patsy’s house was consumed and her rival had felt the sharp edge of her knife. But there was no appeasing Java’s heart; and wicked though she was herself, and misconducted, she still could not endure to be supplanted by another. My father spoke to her with severity, saying that she had done all that our custom demanded, and that there must now be peace and forgetting. But the blood came hotly into her face, and she answered not a word, nor made the least sign to obey Letonu’s words. Then I saw with a certainty that the war with Sina, far from being finished, was only just beginning; and my body quivered all over with the fear of what was to come.
“For a long time, however, Java did nothing, and went about as usual, seeming to take no further thought. The old women of the family returned to their ordinary occupations, and no longer lay banded in places where Sina might pass. It would have mattered nothing if they had, for the little Pig-face stuck to her house like a barnacle to a rock; and except on Sundays, when she went to church between Patsy and Ta’a, we never saw the least hair of her head. But Java knew of means more potent than knives for the undoing of a worthless person, and she sought out Malesa, the old wizard of Aleipata, to whom one went ordinarily for love-philters and medicines. For a dollar he gave Java a curse on a sheet of paper, and told her to nail it to the church door on the following Sunday. This she did, to the great indignation of Nehemiah and the elders, though to no purpose so far as concerned the little Pig-face, who happened that day and all the Sundays after to keep away from church, like a heathen in the Black Islands. For what worth is a curse if thy enemy reads it not, nor goest even near the door on which it is placed? Is it not like firing a bullet in the air, hurting nothing?
“So Java returned again to Malesa the wizard, and, for lack of better gifts, she carried with her the sewing-machine she had possessed before her marriage. But the old man said he must have more, and spoke like one delirious, of a hundred dollars and a boat; and when she cried out, he laid his skinny hand on her shoulder and looked a long time into her eyes, and then turned the wheel of the sewing-machine to show that it was broken. But Java’s heart was stronger than a man’s and full of hatred; so instead of shrinking back, as most women would have done, she told him boldly to name some other price, thinking, perhaps, to give a finger, as Fetuao had done when her husband was perishing with the measles.
“‘Thy long, curly hair,’ said Tingelau, slowly, ‘and I will make of it a head-dress for my son.’
“‘I will give thee that and more, also,’ said Java, with the tears in her eyes, for there was to her nothing so beautiful as her hair.
“Then, behold, a strange thing happened, for as she knelt before the wizard and undid the knot of her hair, letting it tumble over her bosom like a cascade, the old man touched it not with the scissors in his hand, no, not even cutting so much as a single hair.
“‘Java,’ he said, ‘thou art too beautiful to mar. Some other girl must provide a head-dress for my son, and thou shalt return perfect as thou camest; though I shall retain the sewing-machine for my pains, and from time to time, without fail, thou shalt give me a silver dollar until five be reached. And for this small, insignificant reward I shall prepare thee a curse the like of which no wizard ever made before—a curse which beside the other shall be as a man to a child, so that the whole world shall tremble and the dead turn in their graves.’