freeze the blood; and, the day-star just rising from the sea, he
suddenly was not. Then Rua understood why his father prospered,
why his fishes rotted early in the day, and why some were always
carried to the cemetery and laid upon the graves. My informant is
a man not certainly averse to superstition, but he keeps his head,
and takes a certain superior interest, which I may be allowed to
call scientific. The last point reminding him of some parallel
practice in Tahiti, he asked Rua if the fish were left, or carried
home again after a formal dedication. It appears old Mariterangi
practised both methods; sometimes treating his shadowy partner to a
mere oblation, sometimes honestly leaving his fish to rot upon the
grave.

It is plain we have in Europe stories of a similar complexion; and
the Polynesian varua ino or aitu o le vao is clearly the near
kinsman of the Transylvanian vampire. Here is a tale in which the
kinship appears broadly marked. On the atoll of Penrhyn, then
still partly savage, a certain chief was long the salutary terror
of the natives. He died, he was buried; and his late neighbours
had scarce tasted the delights of licence ere his ghost appeared
about the village. Fear seized upon all; a council was held of the
chief men and sorcerers; and with the approval of the Rarotongan
missionary, who was as frightened as the rest, and in the presence
of several whites--my friend Mr. Ben Hird being one--the grave was
opened, deepened until water came, and the body re-interred face
down. The still recent staking of suicides in England and the
decapitation of vampires in the east of Europe form close
parallels.

So in Samoa only the spirits of the unburied awake fear. During