By four o'clock in the afternoon we had gained a clear spot on the crest of the range, from where we had a most glorious view of the south coast imaginable. Three thousand feet below us were the russet-hued thatched roofs of the houses of Siumu Village; beyond, the pale green water that lay between the barrier reef and the mainland, then the long curving line of the reef itself with its seething surf, and, beyond that again, the deep, deep blue of the Pacific, sparkling brightly in the westering sun.
Leaning my gun against one of the many buttresses of a mighty masa'oi tree, I was drinking in the beauty of the scene, when we heard the shrill, cackling scream of a mountain cock, evidently quite near. Giving the boy my gun, I told him to go and shoot it; then sitting down on the carpet of leaves, I awaited his return with the bird, half-resolved to spend the night where I was, for I was very tired and began to feel the premonitory chills of an attack of ague.
In ten minutes the sound of a gun-shot reverberated through the forest aisles, and presently I heard Sui returning. He was running, and holding by its neck one of the biggest mountain cocks I ever saw. As he ran, he kept glancing back over his shoulder, and when he reached me and threw down gun and bird, I saw that he was trembling from head to foot.
“What is the matter?” I asked; “hast seen an aitu vao (evil spirit of the forest)?”
“Aye, truly,” he said shudderingly, “I have seen a devil indeed, and the marrow in my bones has gone—I have seen Te-bari, the Tâfito."{*}
* The Samoans term all the natives of the Equatorial Islands
“Tâfito”.
I sprang to my feet and seized him by the wrist.
“Where was he?” I asked.
“Quite near me. I had just shot the wild moa vao (mountain cock) and had picked it up when I heard a voice say in Samoan—but thickly as foreigners speak: 'It was a brave shot, boy'. Then I looked up and saw Te-bari. He was standing against the bole of a masa'oi tree, leaning on his rifle. Round his earless head was bound a strip of ie mumu (red Turkey twill), and as I stood and trembled he laughed, and his great white teeth gleamed, and my heart died within me, and——”
I do not want to disgust my readers, but truth compels me to say that the boy there and then became violently sick; then he began to sob with terror, stopping every now and then to glance around at the now darkening forest aisles of grey-barked, ghostly and moss-covered trees.