nt the noose, and Red Chicken was up and away,
while his companions on a nearby cliff pulled in the rope and killed
the shark with spears in shallow water. Red Chicken said that he had
learned this art from a Samoan, whose people were cleverer killers of
sharks than the Marquesans. It could be done only when the shark was
full-fed, satisfied, and lazy.

I had seen the impossible, but I was to hear a thing positively
incredible. While Red Chicken sat breathing deeply in the canoe,
filled with pride at my praises, and the others were contriving
means of carrying home the shark meat, I observed a number of fish
swimming around and through the coral caves, and jumped to the
conclusion that from their presence Red Chicken had deduced the
well-filled stomachs and thoroughly satisfied appetite of the shark.
Red Chicken replied, however, that they were a fish never eaten by
sharks, and offered an explanation to which I listened politely, but
with absolute unbelief. Imagine with what surprise I found Red
Chicken's tale repeated in a book that I read some time later when I
had returned to libraries.

There is a fish, the Diodon antennatus, that gets the better of the
shark in a curious manner. He can blow himself up by taking in air
and water, until he becomes a bloated wretch instead of the fairly
decent thing he is in his normal moments. He can bite, he can make a
noise with his jaws, and can eject water from his mouth to some
distance. Besides all this, he erects papillae on his skin like
thorns, and secretes in the skin of his belly a carmine fluid that
makes a permanent stain. Despite all these defences, if the shark is
fool enough to heed no warning and to eat Diodon, the latter puffs
himself up and eats his way clean through the shark to liberty,
leaving the shark riddled and leaky, and, indeed, dead.

Should this still be doubted, my new authority is Charles Darwin.

After his display of skill and daring--and, as I thought, vivid
imagination--Red Chicken became my special friend and guide, and on
one occasion it was our being together, perhaps, saved his life, and
afforded me one of the most thrilling moments of my own.

He and I had gone in a canoe after nightfall to spear fish outside
the Bay of Virgins. Night fishing has its attractions in these
tropics, if only for the freedom from severe heat, the glory of the
moonlight or starlight, and the waking dreams that come to one upon
the sea, whe