Now the Long Ears (“Hanau Epé”) and Short Ears (“Hanau Momoku”) lived together mixed up all over the land, but one of the Long Ears, Ko Ita by name, who lived at Orongo, had in his house the bodies of thirty boys, whom he had killed to eat. Among his victims were the seven sons of one man, Ko Pepi. Ko Pepi went mad, and ran round and round till he fell down, and his brothers took their mataa and killed the Long Ears at Vinapu and at Orongo. They were joined by the other Short Ears, till the Long Ears took refuge in the eastern headland, across which they then dug a ditch and filled it with brushwood in order to make a fire in self-defence. Now a body of the Short Ears were drawn up in array in front of the ditch, but another party were shown the way round at night by an old woman, and thus turned their flank; so when morning dawned the Long Ears found themselves attacked both from behind and before, and then were swept into the ditch of their own making.[69] There they were all burnt except two, who made their way to a cave, near Anakena, where they hid, but they were dug out of it and killed, calling aloud “Oroini,” the meaning of which is not known. Such is the outline of these stories; the most definite and agreed points are the most incomprehensible—namely, the landing of the six men prior to that of the main wave, and the concealed arrival of Oroi. The sons of Hotu-matua are not known exactly. Kotuu is sometimes identified with Ko Tuumaheki, and is sometimes a separate person. Miru occasionally figures as one of them, which is inconsistent with the statement that four of Tuukoihu’s descendants are the ancestors of four subdivisions of that clan. Miru is also the name given in all the lists to Tuumaheki’s son, the third ariki. Hotu Iti was always a district, never the name of a clan. On the most interesting point—namely, the origin of the Long Ears—there is the most vagueness. According to Kilimuti, who was a recognised authority, and whose account of the landing has been followed, Hotu-matua and those in his boat were the Short Ears, Hinelilu and the crew of the second boat the Long Ears. When asked how it was that the two came together, he merely replied that it was in the same way as we ourselves had various nationalities on the yacht. According to this authority, the destruction in the ditch took place in the time of Hotu-matua’s children. Another version, given by three old men in conclave, was that the Long Ears came into existence on the island through the “mana” of the third ariki. Discussion one day waxed quite fierce on the point till Te Haha’s wife, who was a shrewd middle-aged woman, turned and said, “Never mind them, Mama, they don’t know anything about it,” which probably summed up the situation. The story of the ditch and the final extinction is well-established legend. The term Long Ears seemed to convey to the natives not the custom of distending the ears, but having them long by nature.