Savaii, a powerfully built woman who
was incautiously bathing at the mouth of a stream was seized by one of
these sharks almost before she could utter a cry, so swiftly and
suddenly was she attacked. Several attempts were made to capture the
brute, which continued to haunt the scene of the tragedy for several
days, but it was too cunning to take a hook and was never caught.

This particular _ta~nifa_, which had been seen by the young Manono
chief and his men on the preceding evening had made its appearance soon
after darkness had fallen and had cruised to and fro across the mouth of
the Vaivasa till the tide began to fall, when it made its way seaward
through a passage in the reef. It was, so Li'o assured me, quite eight
feet in length and very wide across the head and shoulders. The water
was clear and by the bright starlight they had discerned its movements
very easily; once it came well into the river and remained stationary
for some minutes, lying under about two feet of water. Some of the
Manono men, hailing a picket of the enemy on the opposite bank of the
river, asked for a ten minutes' truce to try and shoot it; this was
granted, and standing on top of the sandy trench, half a dozen young
fellows fired a volley at the shark from their Sniders. None of the
bullets took effect and the _ta~nifa_ sailed slowly off again to
cruise to and fro for another hour, watching for any hapless person who
might cross the river.

Just as the kava was being handed round, some children who were on watch
cried out that the _ta~nifa_ had come. Springing to his feet, Li'o
again hailed the enemy's picket on the other side, and a truce was
agreed to, so that "the white men could have a look at the
_ma|lie_"--shark.

Thirty or forty yards away was what seemed to be a huge, irregular and
waving mass of phosphorus which, as it drew nearer, revealed the
outlines of the dreaded fish. It came in straight for the mouth of the
creek, passed over the pebbly bar, and then swam leisurely about in the
brackish water, moving from bank to bank at less than a dozen feet from
the shore. The stream of bright phosphorescent light which had
surrounded its body when it first appeared had now, owing to there being
but a minor degree of phosphorus in the brackish water, given place to
a dulled, sickly, greenish reflection, accentuated however by thin,
vivid streaks, caused by the exudation from the gills of a streaming,
viscid matter, common to some spe