Page:Adventures of Kimble Bent.djvu/133

Rh ling through the forest with Titoko and his band of Hauhaus, the chief's shoulder accidentally struck against a flax kit containing some cooked potatoes which an old man was carrying on his back. Titoko immediately ordered the man to throw the potatoes and basket away, for the food had become infected, through contact with the priest, with the mysterious and deadly microbe of the tapu, and consequently unfit to be eaten. So the old fellow had to cast his day's rations into the bushes and go fasting.

Titokowaru would suffer no rivals in the pa. Now and then it happened during the war-days that some budding tohunga would arise and prophesy things, in bold opposition to the chief, and announce that his familiar spirit, or his ancestral gods, had conferred priestly powers upon him. Titoko had "a short way with dissenters." His usual and most effective method of silencing the pretender was to take a basket of potatoes in his hand and seek out his rival.

"What," he would say, "have you then an atua, a god of your own?" Should the Hauhau be so imprudent as to answer "Yes," Titoko would lift his potato-kit and set it on his rival's head. "That for your atua!" It was enough. The other's tapu—if he ever had any—would be immediately destroyed by such an act, for the head of man must not be touched by food, and any self-respecting atua would desert a tapu-less Maori without delay.