That evening, when Marama had recounted the details of our hunt, his mother told us one of her tales of heathen days--the story of how the first pigs were given by the ancient gods to mankind. Many of her words I understood; at times her son whispered a translation in rapid broken English. We were lying on a wide mat, spread under the palms close to the beach. A new moon was setting behind the point and the evening was so calm that only the faintest of murmurs came from the reef. There was a time--so the story ran--many years ago, when there were no pigs on any of these islands. In those days men ate only fish, and sometimes, in seasons of famine, the flesh of rats. The clans of the different valleys were constantly at war, for there was no one government over the island--no family of Raiatean chiefs. Men lost heart for the planting when villages were destroyed and crops burned on every hand, and many of the people left their lands to live in hidden caves among the hills. In this bay of Faatemu lived a feeble old man, blind with age and weeping, for his wife and all but one of his children had been slaughtered in the wars. He was called Vatea, and the name of his young son, who cared for him, was Tamatoa. They lived in a rude thatch-shelter the boy had built. It was a time of famine; a war-party from Tahaa had burned the village, and there were no plantations of yams or sweet potatoes. The men of Tahaa, as was their custom, had chopped down all the coconut palms, and Tamatoa feared to go after plantains. By day the father and son kept to their hidden shelter, and each night the boy came cautiously to the seaside, to catch what fish he could. Since he dared not use a torch, that was not much; on many occasions his patience was rewarded by no more than one small fish. Then he would make for himself a poor dish of scraped banana-stalks, not fit to keep the life in a man, and after preparing his single fish, he would carry the food to where blind old Vatea awaited him. "I have caught only two small fish," he told the old man at these times; "one for you, and one for me. Now let us eat!" And while the hungry father devoured his fish, the son would make a great noise of smacking his own lips over the wretched scrapings of banana stalk. Each day the fish were smaller and more difficult to catch, and finally the old man was starving, though Tamatoa gave him all the real food that he could find. As happens at such times, Vatea grew suspicious of his son, thinking that the boy was taking advantage of his blindness to save the best morsels for himself. One day, when the son brought a small raw fish and his own dish of grated banana-stalk, the old man spoke. 'Fetch me a calabash of cool water from the stream,' he said; and when the boy was gone, he felt his way across to where his son's food lay in a wooden bowl. Then his tears fell, and his heart was heavy with remorse.