Though this Mohammedan’s dwelling looked like some three-roomed cow-shed, it was really the deserted ancestral hall of the great chief O Le Sula Motavia, a heathen divine who had had his skull blown off in the tribal war of 1885. This dwelling was situated about two miles south-west, on the slopes of Vaea and not so far from Robert Louis Stevenson’s old home, Vailima. And while O Le Sula Motavia slept on in his cold bed within eight yards of his ancestral front door, with the large orange tree spread above, and the blue jungle flowers blowing over him, Rajah Barab, the sinful Mohammedan, sat in Motavia’s old halls drinking deeply, as warm-eyed native girls danced and sang before him. Now this old heathen’s homestead had not been turned exactly into a _tambu-house_ after the New Guinea style, for Barab had no idols within. But, to make up for those wooden images that were usually carved so as to express a heathen’s ideas of Venus and jovial Bacchus, Barab himself would stand erect so that the native maidens could worship the light of his living eyes and kneel in complete obeisance at his sandalled feet. He made a fine idol. He was a tall, broad-shouldered sinner. He wore a richly-coloured turban and waist-swathing which he well knew pleased the eyes of romantic Samoan girls. Perhaps his chief adornment was his long iron-grey beard. He swore by it and pulled it thoughtfully when he appeared to meditate over his infinite wisdom. And when he squatted half-erect on his fibre mat before the admiring, awestruck maids, his eyes had a far-away gaze in them that seemed to have kinship with the _vers libre_ and the poetic grin that enshrined his ugly mug. I say “mug” because it resembled the rim of a mug, and did not look like a human mouth at all. And _I_ should know, because I was a witness of his far-away-looking gaze and poetic grin, for I dined with him. Truth to tell, Rajah Barab had plenty of cash, and so Giovanni and myself, both in a cashless state, were compelled to accept the liberal fee which he offered us should we perform on our instruments at one of his special Mohammedan festivals. Our Yankee friend was down with the delirium tremens at Apia at the time. It was unfortunate, because I know that he would have been a great help to us that night.