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“While they paused, huddling together irresolutely, there suddenly burst upon their ears a tempest of exultant yells, and from both sides of the hill they had lately left the whole force of Tongans rushed after them. They fled as flies the booby before the frigate-bird, and with as little hope of escape. Before them spread this same bright sea smiling up at them as if in welcome. You know how our people love the sea, love to cradle ourselves on its caressing waves from the day when, newly born, our mothers lay us in its refreshing waters, until even its life-giving touch can no longer reanimate our withered bodies. So who can wonder that the maidens fled to it for refuge. Over this shining sand they rushed, plunging in ranks from yonder reef-edge into the quiet blue beyond. Hard behind them came the hunters, sure of their prey. They reached the reef and stared with utter dread and amazement upon the pretty play of a great school of porpoises that, in just such graceful evolutions as we have now seen, manifested their full enjoyment of life. Terror seized upon those blood-lusting Tongans, their muscles shrank and their weapons fell. Had there been one hundred Hapaian warriors left alive they might have destroyed the whole Tongan host, for it was become as a band of lost and terrified children dreading at every step to meet the vengeance of the gods. But there were none to hinder them, so they fled in safety to their own shores, never to invade Hapai again. And when, after many years, the few survivors of that week of death had repeopled Hapai, the story of the four hundred maidens befriended by the sea-gods in their time of need was the most frequently told among us. And to this day is the porpoise ‘taboo,’ although we know now that this legend, as well as all the others which have been so carefully preserved among us, is only the imagination of our forefathers’ hearts. Yet I often wish that we knew some of them were true.”