第66章 GRAVEYARD STORIES(2)

This bundle of weird stories sprang from the burial and the woman's selfish conjuration.I was dissatisfied with what I heard,harped upon questions,and struck at last this vein of metal.It is from sundown to about four in the morning that the kinsfolk camp upon the grave;and these are the hours of the spirits'wanderings.At any time of the night -it may be earlier,it may be later -a sound is to be heard below,which is the noise of his liberation;at four sharp,another and a louder marks the instant of the re-imprisonment;between-whiles,he goes his malignant rounds.'Did you ever see an evil spirit?'was once asked of a Paumotuan.

'Once.''Under what form?''It was in the form of a crane.''And how did you know that crane to be a spirit?'was asked.'I will tell you,'he answered;and this was the purport of his inconclusive narrative.His father had been dead nearly a fortnight;others had wearied of the watch;and as the sun was setting,he found himself by the grave alone.It was not yet dark,rather the hour of the afterglow,when he was aware of a snow-white crane upon the coral mound;presently more cranes came,some white,some black;then the cranes vanished,and he saw in their place a white cat,to which there was silently joined a great company of cats of every hue conceivable;then these also disappeared,and he was left astonished.

This was an anodyne appearance.Take instead the experience of Rua-a-mariterangi on the isle of Katiu.He had a need for some pandanus,and crossed the isle to the sea-beach,where it chiefly flourishes.The day was still,and Rua was surprised to hear a crashing sound among the thickets,and then the fall of a considerable tree.Here must be some one building a canoe;and he entered the margin of the wood to find and pass the time of day with this chance neighbour.The crashing sounded more at hand;and then he was aware of something drawing swiftly near among the tree-tops.It swung by its heels downward,like an ape,so that its hands were free for murder;it depended safely by the slightest twigs;the speed of its coming was incredible;and soon Rua recognised it for a corpse,horrible with age,its bowels hanging as it came.Prayer was the weapon of Christian in the Valley of the Shadow,and it is to prayer that Rua-a-mariterangi attributes his escape.No merely human expedition had availed.

This demon was plainly from the grave;yet you will observe he was abroad by day.And inconsistent as it may seem with the hours of the night watch and the many references to the rising of the morning star,it is no singular exception.I could never find a case of another who had seen this ghost,diurnal and arboreal in its habits;but others have heard the fall of the tree,which seems the signal of its coming.Mr.Donat was once pearling on the uninhabited isle of Haraiki.It was a day without a breath of wind,such as alternate in the archipelago with days of 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 NOTRIGHT.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 the bodies but on the souls of the dead.The point is clearly made in a Tahitian story.A child fell sick,grew swiftly worse,and at last showed signs of death.The mother hastened to the house of a sorcerer,who lived hard by.'You are yet in time,'said he;'a spirit has just run past my door carrying the soul of your child wrapped in the leaf of a purao;but I have a spirit stronger and swifter who will run him down ere he has time to eat it.'Wrapped in a leaf:like other things edible and corruptible.