Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/264

198 over his fortune and welfare, and that this god would take care that such pernicious attempts, on the part of the disgraced chief, should not affect the other chiefs of his army, or if they did, that he should be made acquainted with it by the priest.—The company now dispersed.

After this period Mappa Haano always wore mats as significant of his degraded state. He seldom attended any public ceremonies or assemblies, because it obliged him to sit along with the common people, and he could not brook, on such occasions, to feel so much his inferiority to other chiefs who formerly were his equals. It must not be supposed that he always wore these mats from pure humility, but rather from fear, for had he appeared without them, Finow might have been angry, and death might have been the consequence.

There being now every day some desertion or another from either army to the opposite one, the king issued orders that every deserter from the enemy should be put to death, the same as if he had been a deserter from himself. This he did the better to avoid all communication between the two contending armies.

For some time past several of Finow's men had been killed in different instances, by three or four of the enemy, under the command of a warrior named Moteitá, a most expert and