Page:An account of the natives of the Tonga Islands.djvu/265

Rh daring fellow, who often ventured by night and early in the morning close up to the colo of Neafoo to kill any stragglers they could meet with. One morning a party of Finow's men, twelve or fourteen in number, among whom was Mr. Mariner, being out on a little excursion, surprised four of the enemy, who were busily employed digging ma in a pit: these they immediately laid hold of, and dragged out, to take them home prisoners. Imagining they had got Moteitá and his followers who had so often committed depredations upon them, they resolved to make a signal example of their prisoners. A young chief, however, objected to this measure, and proposed that it would be better to decapitate them at once, and take their heads home. This plan was immediately assented to, but some one observing that they had no knives with them, another casting his eyes upon the ground, remarked, there was something that would do as well; and taking up a shell from a neighbouring spot, where some persons had been eating large pearl oysters, he proposed to proceed to work with oyster-shells as substitutes for knives: this was immediately approved of, and the four unfortunate