“The first time Honi threw his harpoon, he hooked my great-uncle.  He hooked him through the middle, and before he could be saved, a half dozen of the Tiu men pulled on the rope and dragged him over the line to be killed and eaten.

“Two more of our tribe Honi snared with this devilish spear, and it was not so much death as being pulled over to them and roasted that galled us.  All day the battle raged, except when both sides stopped by agreement to eat popoi and rest, but late in the afternoon a strange thing happened.

“Honi had thrown his harpoon, and by bad aim it entered a tree.  The end of the line he had about his left arm, and as he tried to pull out the spear-head from the wood, his legs became entangled in the rope, and my grandfather, who was very strong, seized the rope near the tree, dragged the white man over the line, and killed him with a rock.

“The enemy ran away then, and that night our people ate Honi.  Grandfather said his flesh was so tough they had to boil it.  There were no tipoti (Standard-oil cans) in those days, but our people took banana leaves and formed a big cup that would hold a couple of quarts of water, and into these they put red-hot stones, and the water boiled.  Grandfather said they cut Honi into small pieces and boiled him in many of these cups.  Still he was tough, but nevertheless they ate him.

“Honi was tattooed.  Not like Marquesans, but like some white sailors, he had certain marks on him.  Grandfather saved these marks, and wore them as a tiki, or amulet, until he died, when he gave it to me.  He had preserved the skin so that it did not spoil.”

Haabunai yawned and said his mouth was parched from much talking, but when a shell of rum was set before him and he had drunk, he fetched from his house the tiki.  It was as large as my hand, dark and withered, but with a magnifying glass I could see a rude cross and three letters, I H S in blue.

“Grandfather became a Christian and was no longer an enata Ttaikaia, an eater of men, but he kept the tiki always about his neck, because he thought it gave him strength,” said my guest.

I handed him back the gruesome relic, though he began advances to make it my property.  For the full demijohn he would have parted with the tiki that had been his grandfather’s, but I had no fancy for it.  One can buy in Paris purses of human skin for not much more than one of alligator hide.

“Honi must have been very tough,” I said.

“He must have been,” Haabunai said regretfully.  “Grandfather had his teeth to the last.  He would never eat a child.  Like all warriors he preferred for vengeance’s sake the meat of another fighter.”

He had not yet sprung the grim jest of almost all cannibalistic narratives.  I did not ask if Honi’s wife had eaten of him, as had Tahia of her white man.  It is probable that she did, and that they deceived her.  It was the practical joke of those days.