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While I lay quietly wondering over the amazing display I had just witnessed, I was almost startled to hear my companion speak, for he seldom did so unless spoken to first. (I translate.) “The great game of the sea-pigs that we have just seen brings back to my memory an old story which is still told among our people, but one which we are trying hard to forget with all the others, because they are of the evil days, and stir up in our children those feelings that we have fought so long to bury beyond resurrection. This story, however, is harmless enough, although I should neither tell it to, or listen to it from, one of mine own people. Long ago when we worshipped the old cruel gods, and my ancestors were chief priests of that worship, holding all the people under their rule in utter terror and subjection, our chief, yes, our only, business besides religion was war. Our women were slaves who were only born for our service, and it is not easy now to understand what our feelings then were toward the sex to whom we are now so tender. Our only talk was of the service of the gods and of war, which indeed was generally undertaken for some religious reason, more often than not to provide human victims for sacrifice. In one of these constantly recurring wars the men of Tonga-tabu—of course each group of these islands was then independent of the others—made a grand raid upon Hapai. They were helped by some strangers, who had been washed ashore from some other islands to the northward, to build bigger and better war-canoes than had ever before been seen, for our people were never famous for canoe-building. They kept their plans so secret that when at daybreak one morning the news ran round Hapai that a whole fleet of war-canoes were nearing the shore, our people were like a school of flying-fish into the midst of which some dolphin has suddenly burst. One of my ancestors, called ‘The Bone-Breaker’ from his great strength and courage, met the invaders with a mere handful of his followers and delayed their landing for hours until he and all his warriors were killed. By this time fresh bands were continually arriving, so that the warriors from Tonga must needs fight every inch of their way through the islands. And as they destroyed band after band their war-hunger became greater, their rage rose, and they determined to leave none of us living except such as they kept for sacrifice on their altars at home. Day after day the slaughter went on, ever more feeble grew the defence, until warriors who had never refused the battle hid themselves like the pêca in holes of the rocks. Behind us, about two miles inland, there is a high hill with a flat top and steep sides. To this as a shelter fled all the unmarried girls of our people, fearing to be carried away as slaves to Tonga, but never dreaming of being slain if their hiding-place was found. Here they remained unseen for seven days, until, ravenous with hunger, they were forced to leave their hiding-place and come down. But they hoped that, although no tidings had reached them from outside, their enemies had departed. Four hundred of them reached the plain over which we passed just now, weak with fasting, with no man to lead them, trembling at every rustling branch in the forest around. All appeared as it does to-day, the islands seemed slumbering in serene peace, although they knew that every spot where their people had lived was now defiled by the recent dead.