Summary

2. Perina describes the moment when, after a long delay, Fa’a and Tallent returned to their camp followed by another individual. Perina then recounts the story told by the two men – how they searched for a long time; how they eventually encountered a wild, aged woman who climbed down a tree headfirst; and how her initial screaming fear eventually calmed into a kind of unquestioning, thoughtless trust. As they returned to camp, the woman following, they found a spear stuck in a tree. This, Perina says, struck Fa’a as frightening, given that U’ivuans see their spears as an extension of themselves: to him the spear, with no apparent owner nearby, suggests that something bad might have happened. Perina, however, saw the spear as another suggestion that, like the appearance of the woman, indicated...