deous jaws and gleaming
cruel teeth had sealed their fate. Maddened with fear, the rest of the
people threw everything out of the six other canoes to lighten them,
and as the bundles of mats and baskets of food touched the water the
sharks seized and bit, tore and swallowed. Then, one by one, every
paddle was grabbed from the hands of the paddlers, and the canoes
broached to and filled in that sea of death--all save one, which was
carried by the force of the wind away from the rest. In this were the
only survivors--two men.

* * * * *

The agony could not have lasted long. "Were I to live as long as he
whom the FAIFEAU (missionary) tells us lived to be nine hundred and
sixty and nine, I shall hear the groans and cries and shrieks of that
PO MALAIA, that night of evil luck," said one of the two who lived, to
Denison, the white trader at Nanomea. "Once did I have my paddle fast
in the mouth of a little devil, and it drew me backwards, backwards,
over the stern till my head touched the water. TAH! but I was strong
with fear, and held on, for to lose it meant death by the teeth. And
Tulua--he who came out alive with me, seized my feet and held on, else
had I gone. But look thou at this"--and he pointed to his scarred neck
and back and shoulders "ere I could free my FOE (paddle) and raise my
head, I was bitten thus by others. Ah, PAPALAGI, some men are born to
wisdom, but most are fools. Had not Atupa been filled with vain fears,
he had killed the man who caused him to lose so many of our people."

"So," said the white man, "and wouldst thou have killed the man who
brought thee the new faith? Fie!"

"Aye, that would I--in those days when I was PO ULI ULI [Heathen, lit. "In
the blackest night"]. But not now, for I am Christian. Yet had Atupa
killed and buried the stranger, we could have lied and said he died of a
sickness when they of his people came to seek him. And then had I now my
son Tagipo with me, he who went into the bellies of the sharks at
Tia Kau."

PALLOU'S TALOI

A Memory Of The Paumotus

I stayed once at Rotoava--in the Low Archipelago, Eastern
Polynesia--while suffering from injuries received in a boat accident
one wild night. My host, the Rotoava trader, was a sociable old pirate,
whose convivial soul would never let him drink alone. He was by trade a
boat-builder, having had, in his early days, a shed at Miller's Point,
in Sydney, where he made money and married a wife. But this latter
eve