contumelious breezes. The divers were in the midst of the lagoon
upon their employment; the cook, a boy of ten, was over his pots in
the camp. Thus were all souls accounted for except a single native
who accompanied Donat into the wood in quest of sea-fowls' eggs.
In a moment, out of the stillness, came the sound of the fall of a
great tree. Donat would have passed on to find the cause. 'No,'
cried his companion, 'that was no tree. It was something NOT
RIGHT. Let us go back to camp.' Next Sunday the divers were
turned on, all that part of the isle was thoroughly examined, and
sure enough no tree had fallen. A little later Mr. Donat saw one
of his divers flee from a similar sound, in similar unaffected
panic, on the same isle. But neither would explain, and it was not
till afterwards, when he met with Rua, that he learned the occasion
of their terrors.

But whether by day or night, the purpose of the dead in these
abhorred activities is still the same. In Samoa, my informant had
no idea of the food of the bush spirits; no such ambiguity would
exist in the mind of a Paumotuan. In that hungry archipelago,
living and dead must alike toil for nutriment; and the race having
been cannibal in the past, the spirits are so still. When the
living ate the dead, horrified nocturnal imagination drew the
shocking inference that the dead might eat the living. Doubtless
they slay men, doubtless even mutilate them, in mere malice.
Marquesan spirits sometimes tear out the eyes of travellers; but
even that may be more practical than appears, for the eye is a
cannibal dainty. And certainly the root-idea of the dead, at least
in the far eastern islands, is to prowl for food. It was as a
dainty morsel for a meal that the woman denounced Donat at the
funeral. There are spirits besides who prey in particular not on