Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 27, 1916.djvu/458

430 helpless as a child. He lifted him, but before he could dash him down Bunga had yielded, and, suspended aloft, was imploring mercy. "You shall be king Muni, but I shall be merely Bunga." So he let him down without throwing him. Thus it is that the coral is soft, and the coral rat weak. (Bunga in Tongan means coral.)

So the years sped by, and Muni dwelt on in Tongatabu, till at last he determined to take his Fijian henchman to revisit his friends at Ono. At the time of their arrival at Ono the land was ravaged by a great dog. Muni proposed that the Fijian go and visit his friends, whilst he himself would lie in the boat and await his return. But scarcely had the unfortunate Fijian started in from the beach when the huge dog sprang out and slew him, bearing the body away to his lair, where he ate it. Muni, all unconscious of this tragedy, waited long in the boat, but at last, uneasy at the non-appearance of his old companion, he set out to seek him. Following the Fijian's footprints he was led to a spot stained with blood. Thence following the footprints of the beast, he came at last to its den. He stood, and called his old friend. No voice replied, instead the ravening monster bounding out leaped at him. Undaunted, Muni seized its jaws and rent them asunder. But in this hour of victory he knew the fate that had overtaken his faithful follower, and, his heart filled with a grief that could not be comforted, he turned back to the beach. There casting off the moorings of his boat, he lay down in the bottom, and so drifted out into the unknown.

Once there lived in Tongatabu a Samoan named Bajikole. Now Bajikole had beautiful yellow hair, and this had won for him the love of two female divinities, called Jiji and Fainga'a. But their affection went unrequited, for Bajikole was already wedded, and his heart clave to his wife. However, the advances of celestial suitors are not easily to be repulsed, and grievous were the trials of the faithful Bajikole at the hands of the divine seducers. Bootless were it for mortal to openly reject such lovers, and long and anxious were the musings of Bajikole as he