“Aia!  Aia!” he said to encourage me.  His club of ironwood, its edge sharp and toothed, he grasped with both hands; he widened his foothold and threw his body forward to withstand a shock.  He calculated to an inch the arrival of the first boar, and swung his u’u on its head with precision.  The boar crumpled up and fell down the hillside.  The second he struck as unerringly, but the third he chose to kill with his knife.

[Illustration:  Feis, or mountain bananas Man in pareu, native loin cloth]

[Illustration:  Where river and bay meet at Oomoa, Island of Fatu-hiva]

He laid down the u’u and drew the knife with one motion, and as the powerful brute rushed at him, stepped aside in the split second between his gauge of its position and its leap.  His knife was thrust straight out.  It met the boar with perfect and delicate accuracy.  The beast fell, quivered a moment, and lay still.

It was a perfection of butchery, for one slash of those tusks, ripping the chief’s legs, and he would have been down, crashing over the cliff, and dead.  I was almost in chants of admiration for his nerve and accuracy.

“Ah, if this had been war, and these had been enemies!”

The dead boars were slung on poles, but a half dozen had to be left on branches of trees for the morrow, and it was late in the day when we reached Grelet’s house for the feast.

Pae, the elder woman of the household, received us joyously.  In the master’s absence she had become a different being from the sulky, contrary one I had seen while he was at home.  Usually she and Hinatiaiani, the mother of the baby, ate their food squatting beside the cook-house; they rarely came upon the veranda, never sat upon a chair, and never were asked to our table.  Now they were in complete possession of the house and Pae was transformed into a jolly soul, her kinsfolk about her on the veranda and the bottles emptying fast.  She celebrated our arrival with the boars by bringing out two quarts of creme de menthe and a bottle of absinthe, so that the mice with the big cat away played an uncorking air right merrily.

All was now a bustle of preparation for the feast.  While many prepared the earth-oven for the pig, the head cook made fire in their primitive way, using the fire-plough of purau-wood braced against a pillar of the veranda.  Meantime the oven was dug, sides and bottom lined with stones, and sticks piled within it for the fire.  A top layer of stones was placed on the flames and when it had grown red-hot, the pig was pulled and hauled over it until the bristles were removed.  The carcass was then carried to the river, the intestines removed, and inside and outside thoroughly washed in a place where the current was strong.

The oven was made ready for its reception by removing the upper layer of stones and the fire, and placing banana-leaves all about the bottom and sides, in which the pig, his own interior filled with hot stones wrapped in leaves, was placed, with native sweet-potatoes and yams beside him.  More leaves covered all, and another layer of red hot stones.  A surface of dirt sealed the oven.