But whether by day or night,the purpose of the dead in these abhorred activities is still the same.In Samoa,my informant had no idea of the food of the bush spirits;no such ambiguity would exist in the mind of a Paumotuan.In that hungry archipelago,living and dead must alike toil for nutriment;and the race having been cannibal in the past,the spirits are so still.When the living ate the dead,horrified nocturnal imagination drew the shocking inference that the dead might eat the living.Doubtless they slay men,doubtless even mutilate them,in mere malice.
Marquesan spirits sometimes tear out the eyes of travellers;but even that may be more practical than appears,for the eye is a cannibal dainty.And certainly the root-idea of the dead,at least in the far eastern islands,is to prowl for food.It was as a dainty morsel for a meal that the woman denounced Donat at the funeral.There are spirits besides who prey in particular not on the bodies but on the souls of the dead.The point is clearly made in a Tahitian story.A child fell sick,grew swiftly worse,and at last showed signs of death.The mother hastened to the house of a sorcerer,who lived hard by.'You are yet in time,'said he;'a spirit has just run past my door carrying the soul of your child wrapped in the leaf of a purao;but I have a spirit stronger and swifter who will run him down ere he has time to eat it.'Wrapped in a leaf:like other things edible and corruptible.