28 Transactions.— Miscellaneous. 
In the morning, early, he again went out on the sea in his canoe to fish, 
and having caught a quantity paddled back to the shore; there he waited 
a long time for the woman (or wife), Houmea, to come down to fetch the 
fish he had caught, but finding she did not come, he went on to the village ; 
and, entering, said to her, ‘‘O, mother, mother! am I to remain ever on 
the sands? there was I waiting for thee, and thou didst not appear; nor, 
indeed, hast thou done any thing at all!” (i.¢., towards preparing for my 
return). Then Houmea arose, and went forth, and when she got to the 
canoe, she swallowed all the fish! But, on her going thither, her husband 
had sent their two children to watch her, and when they got there (within 
sight but hidden), they saw her swallowing the fish. So those children 
returned running to their father, and said to him, «0 sir, O sir! it was 
verily Houmea herself who swallowed the caught fish of thy canoe!” 
Shortly after this Houmea returned to the village, panting and blowing, 
and said to her husband, “ Never a single scrap was there left in thy canoe 
of all the fish thou didst catch! All have been taken away by some man or 
other.” Then her husband replied, « O lady-daughter! who, indeed, is 
that man thou speakest of? The children were verily there, and on their 
looking-out they saw thee—thy own very self—swallowing the fishes of my 
canoe.’ On hearing this she was overwhelmed with shame; nevertheless 
she strove hard at her own proper work, winding about, doubling and 
equivocating, that her theft of fish-stealing might be wholly concealed. In 
addition thereto she also loudly said, that she was guiltless of this charge, 
for she had never known anything whatever of crime, whether of adultery 
or of stealing the food of any man; (therefore, was she likely to begin 
now ?) And then she also said to herself, within her heart, concerning her 
children, “ All right and straight, no doubt, your doings, but I'll equal 
them yet !”’ 
On another morning, after this, the father went again out to sea in his 
canoe to fish, and when his canoe had got out to the fishing-ground and had 
anchored there, Houmea said to one of her children, ‘‘ O child, go for some 
water for us, we are all very thirsty;”” and so the child went. Then she 
called to the other of her children, saying, ‘‘O child, come hither to me, 
that the lice (of thy head) may be caught and killed.”* So this child went 
to her, and squatted down by her, and she caught some lice, and then 
she swallowed the child whole down into her stomach! Just afterwards 
the other child returned with the water, and this one was also swallowed 
up by her. Verily the two children were thus destroyed by her, swallowed 
* The head of a chief's child being rigidly tapu (tabooed, or sacred), could only be 
touched by a tapu person, and so with its vermin ; through which the poor children were 
often great sufferers. 
SSUES UE, San oe ea ee eee 
