"Drink this, Pâkfa, taka ta-ina {**} And talk. Your talk is good to hear. And I can understand."
* Liverpool.
**Lit, dear crony.
He drank the liquor neat, and then washed it down with a cupful of water.
" Tapa! Ah, the good, sweet grog! And see, above us is the round moon, and here be we three. We three—two young and strong, one whose blood is getting cold. Ah, I will talk, and this boy, Temana, will learn that Pâkia is no boasting old liar, but a true man." Then, suddenly dropping the Nukufetau dialect in which he had hitherto spoken, he said quietly in English—
"I told you I could speak other languages beside my own. It is true, for I can talk English and Spanish." Then he went back into native: "But I am not a vain old man. These people here are fools. They think that because on Sundays they dress like white men and go to church five times in one day, and can read and write in Samoan, that they are as clever as white men. Bah! they are fools, fools! Where are the strong men of my youth? Where are the thousand and two hundred people who, when my father was a boy, lived upon the shores of this lagoon? They are gone, gone!"
"True, Pâkfa. They are gone."
"Aye, they are perished like the dead leaves. And once when I said in the hearing of the kaupule (head men) that in the days of the po-uri (heathen times) we were a great people and better off than we are now, I was beaten by my own grand-daughter, and fined ten dollars for speaking of such things, and made to work on the road for two months. But it is true—it is true. Where are the people now? They are dead, perished; there are now but three hundred left of the thousand and two hundred who lived in my father's time. And of those that are left, what are they? They are weak and eaten up with strange diseases. The men cannot hunt and fish as men hunted and fished in my father's time.
" Tah! they are women, and the women are men, for now the man must work for the woman, so that she can buy hats and boots and calicoes, and dress like a white woman. Give me more grog, for these things fill my belly with bitterness, and the grog is sweet. Ah! I shall tell you many things to-night."
"Tell me of them, old man. See, the moon is warm to our skins. And as we drink, we shall eat. Temana here shall bring us food. And we shall talk till the sun shines over the tops of the trees on Motu Luga. I would learn of the old times before this island became lotu (Christianised)."
" Oi. I will tell you. I am now but as an old, upturned canoe that is used for a sitting-place for children who play on the beach at night. And I am called a fool and a bad man, because I sometimes speak of the days that are dead. Temana, is Malepa thy wife virtuous?"