“At Ponape we selected, not without difficulty, workmen to help us⁠—diggers. I had to make extraordinary inducements before I could get together my force. Their beliefs are gloomy, these Ponapeans. They people their swamps, their forests, their mountains, and shores, with malignant spirits⁠— ani they call them. And they are afraid⁠—bitterly afraid of the isles of ruins and what they think the ruins hide. I do not wonder⁠—now!

“When they were told where they were to go, and how long we expected to stay, they murmured. Those who, at last, were tempted made what I thought then merely a superstitious proviso that they were to be allowed to go away on the three nights of the full moon. Would to God we had heeded them and gone too!”