Oro's arrangements were quickly made. Among such close neighbors war was a sudden affair. A secret march by night along the beach, or in canoes along the shore, would bring a hostile force before morning the whole length of the island, from Taravao to Faaa. Many a district has been suddenly attacked and its people massacred, every house burned and every pig carried away, in a raid of a few hours. Generally an alarm of a few minutes was enough to call the warriors to arms, and to hurry the women and children away to the hills. The small chiefery of Amo, where this affair occurred, is close to the hills, and probably its warriors were collected in the Marae, and its women and children were in safety in the woods before Panee called from the top of his cocoanut tree that he could see the spears of the approaching warriors from Vaiari.

Oro's plan of battle succeeded. Hurimaavehi came, was attacked and beaten; but, from this point of the story, even we victors must allow that our tradition needs some little gloss. That Oro should have pursued the flying enemy was perhaps only what an energetic chief must have done in the case of so desperate a quarrel; but, in view of the force which Oro must have had with him to effect a conquest and the very considerable conquests he effected, a candid listener would like to know the Vaiari side of the story. Even a Papara school-girl, if she reads in her history-book the story of Appius Claudius or of Tarquin, would be a little surprised to find that she knew all about it, and that Papara had a Brutus and Virginius of its own quite as good as the Roman. The fight about a woman is the starting-point of all early popular revolutions and poetry; but as all of us, in our family, are

Indigenous Histories