CHAPTER VIII
A NATIVE ENTERTAINMENT
IT was not in accordance with Niuéan custom that visitors should go away empty-handed. At three o'clock one sunny afternoon we were summoned to an entertainment on the square of grass before the Mission-house. Sitting with our backs to the gate, we faced a grassy stage, built, as it were, of palm trees—their stems for wings, their feathery, glistening fronds for flies, and for background the blue Pacific clear to the horizon, save for the Porpoise lying at anchor below.
First there came a band of shy girls with garlands twined in their black tresses and presents in their hands, shepherded by a few armed warriors (in coat and trousers, be it confessed) and three or four aged women capering grotesquely. Sitting down in two double rows facing one another, they began to chant pæans in our honour to the cadence of an English
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