as it came. Prayer was the weapon of Christian in the Valley of

the Shadow, and it is to prayer that Rua-a-mariterangi attributes

his escape. No merely human expedition had availed.

This demon was plainly from the grave; yet you will observe he was

abroad by day. And inconsistent as it may seem with the hours of

the night watch and the many references to the rising of the

morning star, it is no singular exception. I could never find a

case of another who had seen this ghost, diurnal and arboreal in

its habits; but others have heard the fall of the tree, which seems

the signal of its coming. Mr. Donat was once pearling on the

uninhabited isle of Haraiki. It was a day without a breath of

wind, such as alternate in the archipelago with days of

contumelious breezes. The divers were in the midst of the lagoon

upon their employment; the cook, a boy of ten, was over his pots in

the camp. Thus were all souls accounted for except a single native

who accompanied Donat into the wood in quest of sea-fowls' eggs.

In a moment, out of the stillness, came the sound of the fall of a

great tree. Donat would have passed on to find the cause. 'No,'

cried his companion, 'that was no tree. It was something NOT

RIGHT. Let us go back to camp.' Next Sunday the divers were

turned on, all that part of the isle was thoroughly examined, and

sure enough no tree had fallen. A little later Mr. Donat saw one

of his divers flee from a similar sound, in similar unaffected

panic, on the same isle. But neither would explain, and it was not

till afterwards, when he met with Rua, that he learned the occasion

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