The professor, having his victim on the ground before him, takes up his instrument of torture. This consists of a small piece of stick with sharp bones of birds or fishes attached to it. Having previously sketched with a piece of charcoal the pattern intended to be tattooed, he dips the points of the sharp bones into a colouring matter (which is a beautiful jet black, procured from the kernel of the candle-nut), applies it to the surface of the skin, and strikes it smartly with a piece of stick held in his right hand. The skin is punctured in this way, and the dye injected. With the calmness of an operator, and the gravity of an artist, the professor proceeds as long as his patient can endure the pain. Then he ceases, and when the part is sufficiently recovered, the operation is continued until the device or pattern is finished. These patterns vary among different islanders. They consist of circular and curving lines, and representations of palm-trees, animals, etcetera, on the face and body; and to such an extent is tattooing carried, that the whole body is sometimes covered so as nearly to conceal the original colour of the skin. Mr Ellis, who wrote long after the gallant Cook was in his grave, tells us in his most interesting work on the South-Sea Islands, (Ellis's _Polynesian Researches_), that the inhabitants of Tahiti were more simple in their tattooing, and displayed greater taste and elegance than some of the other islanders. "Though some of the figures are arbitrary, such as stars, circles, lozenges, etcetera, the patterns are usually taken from nature, and are often some of the most graceful. A cocoa-nut tree is a favourite object; and I have often admired the taste displayed in the marking of a chief's leg, on which I have seen a cocoa-nut tree correctly and distinctly drawn; its roots spreading at the heel, its elastic stalk pencilled as it were along the tendon, and its waving plume gracefully spread out on the broad part of the calf. Sometimes a couple of stems would be twined up from the heel and divide on the calf, each bearing a plume of leaves.