Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/135

Rh to their notions, active, noble, and glorious. To give an instance of the spirit of these young men, while yet at the island of Tonga, they on one occasion, during the night, undermined a storehouse of yams, cloth, mats, &c. and working their way up into the place, emptied it of every thing it contained; not that they wanted these things, for they were all independent chiefs, but thus they acted solely for their amusement. They had previously taken an oath, by their respective tutelar Gods and their fathers, not to betray one another under penalty of death; and if on these occasions they met with a stranger, who would not readily enter into their views, they put it out of his power to discover them, by dispatching him without farther ceremony.

This chief and his companions being arrived at the Fiji islands, employed themselves in the way suitable to their inclinations; sometimes joining one party, sometimes another, as caprice, or the hopes of plunder, led them: and as many of these islands were not only at war with one another, but also had civil dissensions among themselves, two or three garrisons on one island being in a state of warfare, one with another, (and this was the case in several of them) the new comers found a choice of employment ready prepared for them.