Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/177

Rh THE TONGA ISLANDS. Ill young chiefs belonging to the same place, upon the following conditions : if the girls won the game, they were to divide a yam, which they had in their possession, and give half to the young chiefs ; but if, on the contrary, these won the game, they were still to have half the yam, but were to go out and kill a man, and give half his body to the girls : the result was, that the latter won the game, and giving half their yam to the two chiefs, waited for the per- formance of their agreement. The two young men set out, under cover of the darkness of the night, and concealed themselves near an ene- my's fortress. Early in the morning, a man came out of the fencing to fetch some salt wa- ter from the shore in cocoa-nut shells, which he carried with him jfor the purpose. When he approached the place where the two lay con- cealed, they started out upon him, killed him with their clubs, and, at the risk of their lives, brought his body to Nookoo Nookoo, where they divided it in half, and faithfully performed their promise with the young women. It was more than a fortnight before the ca- noes returned from the Hapai islands with a supply of provisions, owing to the bad state of the weather. Shortly after, the garrison of Nookoo Nookoo sent to request leave to bury the dead bodies of their relations who had fallen