Due decided one day to go to a long-uninhabited house site to gather vara fruits. His wife wished to accompany him, but he would not let her, for he knew that there were shades of the dead at that very place. Gathering the fruits, he delayed more than he intended, and, as the sun was already low, he resolved to pass the night at the abandoned house site. Quickly he made a shelter with the leaves of the numerous bacabeiras growing around the place, since a heavy rain was approaching. When this had passed and darkness had set in, he heard a noise of many people approaching. They were the shades of the dead coming to the site where the house once stood, and suddenly Due realized that he was there once again in the house as he had been in former days.
Soon the shades of the dead began their celebration. The musical instruments sounded. Due was pleased with the antics and decided to participate. He had eaten cupu [a wild chocolate, Theobroma sp.]; now he took the seeds which remained in the membranous and viscous hulls, gluing the hulls to his body and penis, and in this disguise began to dance in the midst of the nachii. Seeing him, they cried: “It is a man! He shakes his penis [with the movements of the dance]!” But because of the hulls they dared not touch him. Finally, however, they decided to “paint him with genipapo,” but Due escaped them, taking refuge in the burrow of a giant armadillo.
One of the nachii wished to dig him out, but when he had almost reached Due, the Indian rattled his quiver. His pursuer, thinking that the noise was that of a hornets’ nest, fled. Another nachii tried to finish digging him out, but Due, with the same trick, made him scamper away, as he did all the rest, too, who dared try it. Suddenly at dawn the house again vanished, and the shades, transformed into little animals, dispersed in all directions.