Or, if the disappearance was in crossing from one valley to another, it is said that a rock or a fall of earth had swept the absent one over a cliff.  These are reasonable explanations, yet there persist whispers of foul appetitites craving gratification and of old rites revived by the moke, the hermits who hide in the mountains.

Two such dissappearances had occurred during my brief stay in Atuona, and I had made little of the whispers.  But now, with the hideous laughter of the hunchback still ringing in my ears, they slipped darkly through my mind, and I never felt the sunshine sweeter or tasted the mountain air with more delight than when we left that unholy place and were out on the trail again.

Our destination was a waterfall, with a pool in which we might bathe, and after leaving the Pekia we followed the stream, climbing higher and higher from the sea.  In the Marquesas all the rivers begin in the high mountains, where from the precipices leap the torrents in times of rain.  As the valleys are mere ravines at their heads, the waters collect in their depths and roll to the ocean, rippling gently on sunny days, but after a downpour raging, rolling huge boulders over and over and tearing away cliffs.

These streams are the life of the people in the upper valleys.  In the old days of warfare many of these mountain dwellers never knew the sea; they were prevented from reaching it by the beach clansmen who claimed the fishing for their own and made it death for the hill people to venture down to the shore.  All the people of a single valley, six or perhaps a dozen clans, united to war against other valleys, its people risking their lives if they trespassed beyond the hills.  Yet under a wise and powerful chief a whole valley lived in amity and knew no class or clan divisions.

“We are going to Vaihae, The Waters of the Great Desire,” said Malicious Gossip.  “It was a sacred place once upon a time.”

We climbed painfully, Le Moine and I suffering keenly from the sharp edges of the stones that cut even through the thick soles of our shoes.  The others, who were barefooted, made nothing of them, walking as easily and lithely as panthers on the jagged trail.  Soon we heard the crash of the Vaihae, and sliding down the mountain-side a hundred feet we came into a depths of a gorge a yard or two wide, a mere crack in the rocks, filled with the boom and roar of rushing water.  The rain-swollen stream, cramped in the narrow passage, flung itself foaming high on the spray-wet cliffs, and dashed in a mighty torrent into a deep howl riven out of the solid granite twenty feet below.