A further account of the feast at Soul-Eaters' Island would be nothing more than a detailed statement of the amount of food consumed, and it would not be credited as truthful. It is enough to say that it was a Latter Day miracle, comparable to the feeding of the five thousand, with this reversal of the circumstances--that food for approximately that number was eaten by twenty-two men. At last Puarei sat back with a groan of content and said, "_Aué! Paia 'huru paia to tatou._" It is impossible to translate this literally, but the exact meaning is, "We are all of us full up to the neck." It was true. We were. That is, all of the men. The women and children were waiting, and as soon as we gave them place they set to on the remnants. Fortunately, there was, as Hunga had said, food and yet more food, so that no one went hungry. At the close of the feast I saw old Rangituki take a fragment of coconut frond and weave it into a neat basket. Then she gathered into it all of the fish bones and hung the basket from one of the rafters of my house. Rangituki was pure heathen, one of the unredeemed of the Rutiaroans, but I noticed that some of the Catholics and Latter Day Saints, even the Reformed Saints of the later Latter Day persuasion, all in good standing in their churches, assisted her in making the collection. I had observed the same practice at other islands. At the beginning of a meal thanks were given to the God of Christians for the bounty of the sea; but fisherman's luck was a matter of the first importance, and, while the old gods might be overthrown, there seemed to be a fairly general belief that it would not do to trifle with immemorial custom.
It was midmorning before the last of the broken meats had been removed and the beach made tidy. The breeze died away, and the shadows of the palms moved only with the imperceptible advance of the sun. It was a time for rest, for quiet meditation, and all of the older people were gathered in the shade, gazing out over a sea as tranquil as their minds, as lonely as their lives had always been and would always be. I knew that they would remain thus throughout the day, talking a little, after the refreshment of light slumbers, but for the most part sitting without speech or movement, their consciousness crossed by vague thoughts which would stir it scarcely more than the cat's-paw ruffled the surface of the water. No sudden, half-anguished realization of the swift passage of time would disturb the peace of their reverie; no sense of old loss to be retrieved would goad them into swift and feverish action.