a wedge of copra burning, propped upon a stone.
Our friends, however, were not alarmed on our behalf. It seemed, or so I understood, that the pebble-tossing spirits were not especially harmful. The visitation of the night might be interpreted as a favorable omen rather than otherwise, signifying that the island spirits recognized our presence and were making us welcome. Moreover, the white man usually is immune from the attacks of the powers of Polynesian darkness. How else explain his recklessness in violating native custom, in sleeping without a light, in eating under a roof, in transgressing any number of prohibitions that have grown up in the half-light of remembered experience in these haunted lands?
I had occasion to observe this fear of the beings of darkness later when at her request I accompanied the daughter of Maru on an errand to the house of a relative, somewhat remote from the main village. Temata led me along the road that leads to the cemetery, but struck away from it into the forest before we reached that point. She was taking no unnecessary chances.
Among the trees, however, she showed increasing alarm. Every large bush, every oddly shaped shadow, caused her to clutch at me in fear. In the gloomiest portion of the wood, an ominous shape appeared suddenly out of the blackness and lurched across our path—a figure of more than human size, it seemed, and of scarcely human shape, with a great antlered head nodding through the gloom.
My companion, in terror, buried her face in my shoulder; I could feel her whole body quivering with fright.
“Let there be life!” said the apparition, and Temata burst out laughing with relief She had recognized the voice of one of her own living relatives.
Our “ghost” was only an honest citizen of Tepuka who had been bold enough, or forced by necessity, to go out at night alone, and the oddity of shape was merely the effect, in the darkness, of the burden he carried on his shoulders.
On the way back, as we hurried over the stony paths that her bare feet knew so well and mine so poorly, I told her that she was safe with me, for the spirits had no power over a white man. She seemed to accept this, but I think she remembered it, not without a trace of malice, at a later time, when, the spirits having apparently punished me for some trespass, she said, “It serves you right!”
Others told us that the dead rise at night and walk about the village, “in their habit as they lived,” indistinguishable from the living, except as they are recognized for individuals who have long since departed this world. For that reason, the road that leads past the small and relatively new cemetery of Tepuka is avoided at night. Nor, we gathered, is this return confined to the dead there interred, whose demise scarcely can antedate the last hurricane. The more ancient dead, it seems, arise from the sea and visit the scenes of their former life.
Surrounded by an atmosphere of such beliefs, one easily slips into the feeling that, after all, anything might be possible. In a spirit half serious, half humorous, I walked out, on a fine evening, down the forbidden street. Far to the left, toward the lagoon shore, lights gleamed through the trees from the houses clustered there. A brighter light moved a torch fisherman, probably, emboldened by hunger to venture abroad at night. If so, he was the only torch fisherman I saw in my time on the island. The early moon cast dense black shadows on the white sand of the road; the forest on either side was dark, and its clumps of pandanus and toumefortia resembled not at all their daylight aspect. It was easy to understand how the mind of the native could populate that darkness with menacing shapes.
The cemetery, however, looked harmless enough: a bare, low-walled quadrangle, lately weeded and swept, in which the few graves, with their wooden crosses, their withered wreaths, seemed lost and lonely in the expanse of moonlight. I walked slowly past; no
Our friends, however, were not alarmed on our behalf. It seemed, or so I understood, that the pebble-tossing spirits were not especially harmful. The visitation of the night might be interpreted as a favorable omen rather than otherwise, signifying that the island spirits recognized our presence and were making us welcome. Moreover, the white man usually is immune from the attacks of the powers of Polynesian darkness. How else explain his recklessness in violating native custom, in sleeping without a light, in eating under a roof, in transgressing any number of prohibitions that have grown up in the half-light of remembered experience in these haunted lands?
I had occasion to observe this fear of the beings of darkness later when at her request I accompanied the daughter of Maru on an errand to the house of a relative, somewhat remote from the main village. Temata led me along the road that leads to the cemetery, but struck away from it into the forest before we reached that point. She was taking no unnecessary chances.
Among the trees, however, she showed increasing alarm. Every large bush, every oddly shaped shadow, caused her to clutch at me in fear. In the gloomiest portion of the wood, an ominous shape appeared suddenly out of the blackness and lurched across our path—a figure of more than human size, it seemed, and of scarcely human shape, with a great antlered head nodding through the gloom.
My companion, in terror, buried her face in my shoulder; I could feel her whole body quivering with fright.
“Let there be life!” said the apparition, and Temata burst out laughing with relief She had recognized the voice of one of her own living relatives.
Our “ghost” was only an honest citizen of Tepuka who had been bold enough, or forced by necessity, to go out at night alone, and the oddity of shape was merely the effect, in the darkness, of the burden he carried on his shoulders.
On the way back, as we hurried over the stony paths that her bare feet knew so well and mine so poorly, I told her that she was safe with me, for the spirits had no power over a white man. She seemed to accept this, but I think she remembered it, not without a trace of malice, at a later time, when, the spirits having apparently punished me for some trespass, she said, “It serves you right!”
Others told us that the dead rise at night and walk about the village, “in their habit as they lived,” indistinguishable from the living, except as they are recognized for individuals who have long since departed this world. For that reason, the road that leads past the small and relatively new cemetery of Tepuka is avoided at night. Nor, we gathered, is this return confined to the dead there interred, whose demise scarcely can antedate the last hurricane. The more ancient dead, it seems, arise from the sea and visit the scenes of their former life.
Surrounded by an atmosphere of such beliefs, one easily slips into the feeling that, after all, anything might be possible. In a spirit half serious, half humorous, I walked out, on a fine evening, down the forbidden street. Far to the left, toward the lagoon shore, lights gleamed through the trees from the houses clustered there. A brighter light moved a torch fisherman, probably, emboldened by hunger to venture abroad at night. If so, he was the only torch fisherman I saw in my time on the island. The early moon cast dense black shadows on the white sand of the road; the forest on either side was dark, and its clumps of pandanus and toumefortia resembled not at all their daylight aspect. It was easy to understand how the mind of the native could populate that darkness with menacing shapes.
The cemetery, however, looked harmless enough: a bare, low-walled quadrangle, lately weeded and swept, in which the few graves, with their wooden crosses, their withered wreaths, seemed lost and lonely in the expanse of moonlight. I walked slowly past; no
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