South Sea Tales : Large Print

d announced his intention of carrying the gospel throughout all Viti Levu.

Now Viti Levu meansthe "Great Land," it being the largest island in a group composed of many large islands, to saynothing of hundreds of small ones.

Here and there on the coasts, living by most precarious tenure,was a sprinkling of missionaries, traders, beche-de-mer fishers, and whaleship deserters.

The smokeof the hot ovens arose under their windows, and the bodies of the slain were dragged by their doorson the way to the feasting.The Lotu, or the Worship, was progressing slowly, and, often, in crablike fashion.

Chiefs, whoannounced themselves Christians and were welcomed into the body of the chapel, had a distressinghabit of backsliding in order to partake of the flesh of some favorite enemy.

Eat or be eaten hadbeen the law of the land; and eat or be eaten promised to remain the law of the land for a long timeto come.

There were chiefs, such as Tanoa, Tuiveikoso, and Tuikilakila, who had literally eatenhundreds of their fellow men.

But among these gluttons Ra Undreundre ranked highest.

RaUndreundre lived at Takiraki. He kept a register of his gustatory exploits. A row of stones outsidehis house marked the bodies he had eaten.

This row was two hundred and thirty paces long, and thestones in it numbered eight hundred and seventy-two.

Each stone represented a body. The row ofstones might have been longer, had not Ra Undreundre unfortunately received a spear in the smallof his back in a bush skirmish on Somo Somo and been served up on the table of Naungavuli,whose mediocre string of stones numbered only forty-eight.