The Ebbing of the Tide, page 59 by Louis Becke
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A native, clad in his grass titi, takes from a wooden peg in the house wall two shells of toddy, and the white wanderer takes one and drinks. He is about to return the other to the man when two girls come up from the beach with their arms around each other's waists, Tahiti fashion, and one calls out with a laugh to "leave some in the shell." This is Laumanu, and if there is one thing in the world that Jake Kennedy cares for above himself it is this tall girl with the soft eyes and lithe figure. And he dreams of her pretty often, and curses fluently to think that she is beyond his reach and is never likely to fill the place of Talamãlu and her many successors. For Laumanu is tabu to a Nuitao chief--that is, she has been betrothed, but the Nuitao man is sixty miles away at his own island, and no one knows when he will claim his avaga. Then the girl gives him back the empty toddy-shell, and, slyly pinching his hand, sails away with her mate, whereupon the susceptible Kennedy, furious with long disappointment, flings himself down on his bed of mats, curses his luck and his unsuspecting rival at Nuitao, and finally decides not to spring a surprise on "dad and mum" by going "hum" for a considerable number of years to come.
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Mr. Jake Kennedy at this time was again a widower--in the widest sense of the word. The last native girl who had occupied the proud position of Te avaga te papalagi (the white man's wife) was a native of the island of Maraki--a dark-skinned, passionately jealous creature, who had followed his fortunes for three years to his present location, and then developed mal-du-pays to such an extent that the local priest and devil-catcher, one Pare-vaka, was sent for by her female attendants. Pare-vaka was not long in making his diagnosis. A little devil in the shape of an octopus was in Tene-napa's brain. And he gave instructions how to get the fiend out, and also further instructions to one of the girl attendants to fix, point-up