n the canoe rests tranquil, the torch blazes, and the
fish swim to meet the harpoon. The night was moonless, but the sea
was covered with phosphorescence, sometimes a glittering expanse of
light, and again black as velvet except where our canoe moved gently
through a soft and glamorous surface of sparkling jewels. A night
for a lover, a lady, and a lute.

Our torch of cocoanut-husks and reeds, seven feet high, was fixed at
the prow, so that it could be lifted up when needed to attract the
fish or better to light the canoe. Red Chicken, in a scarlet _pareu_
fastened tightly about his loins, stood at the prow when we had
reached his favorite spot off a point of land, while I, with a paddle,
noiselessly kept the canoe as stationary as possible.

Light is a lure for many creatures of land and sea and sky. The moth
and the bat whirl about a flame; the sea-bird dashes its body
against the bright glass of the lonely tower; wild deer come to see
what has disturbed the dark of the forest, and fish of different
kinds leap at a torch. Red Chicken put a match to ours when we were
all in readiness. The brilliant gleam cleft the darkness and sent
across the blackness of the water a beam that was a challenge to the
curiosity of the dozing fish. They hastened toward us, and Red
Chicken made meat of those who came within the radius of his harpoon,
so that within an hour or two our canoe was heaped with half a dozen
kinds.

Far off in the path of the flambeau rays I saw the swordfish leaping
as they pursued small fish or gamboled for sheer joy in the luminous
air. They seemed to be in pairs. I watched them lazily, with
academic interest in their movements, until suddenly one rose a
hundred feet away, and in his idle caper in the air I saw a bulk so
immense and a sword of such amazing size that the thought of danger
struck me dumb.

He was twenty-five feet in length, and had a dorsal fin that stood
up like the sail of a small boat. But even these dimensions cannot
convey the feeling of alarm his presence gave me. His next leap
brought him within forty feet of us. I recalled a score of accidents
I had seen, read, and heard of; fishermen stabbed, boats rent,
steel-clad ships pierced through and through.

Red Chicken held the torch to observe him better, and shouted:

"_Apau!_ Look out! Paddle fast away!"

I needed no urging. I dug into the glowing water madly, and the
sound of my paddle on the side of the canoe might have been hear