ent and tell tales
while the pipe circulated. One had seen his friend pierced through
the chest by a sword-fish and instantly killed. Numerous incidents
of their canoes being sunk by these savage Spears of the Sea were
recited by the wise men who, with no books to bother them or written
records to dull their memories, preserved the most minute
recollections of important events of the past.

For my part, on the subject of the demoniacal work of the swordfish,
I regaled them with accounts of damage wrought to big ships; of how
a bony sword had penetrated the hull of the _Fortune_, of Plymouth,
cutting through copper, an inch of under-sheathing, a three-inch
plank of hard wood, twelve inches of solid, white-oak timber, two
and a half inches of hard oak ceiling, and the head of an oil cask;
of the sloop _Morning Star_, which had to be convoyed to port with a
leak through a hole in eight and a half inches of white oak; of the
United States Fish Commission sloop, _Red Hot_, rammed and sunk; of
the British dreadnaught, which was pumped to Colombo where the leak
made by the fish was found, and 15,000 francs insurance paid.

"Our fathers never went fishing until they had implored the favor of
the gods," said Red Chicken. "I am a Catholic, but it may be the sea
is so old, older than Christ, that the devils there obey the old
gods we used to worship. If that largest Spear of the Sea that we
saw had attacked me or our boat, he would have killed us and sunk
the canoe, for he was four fathoms long, and his weapon was as tall
as I am."

The _tatihi_ nodded his head gravely. His soul was still in the
keeping of the gods of his fathers, and-he saw in Red Chicken's
wound the vengeance of the un-appeased Aavehie.

I was amazed to find that Red Chicken had no fever, and was
recovering rapidly. Without modern medicine or knowledge of it, the
_tatihi_ had healed the sufferer, and I drew him on to talk of his
skill.

His surgical knowledge was excellent; he knew the location of the
vital organs quite accurately from frequent cutting up of bodies for
eating. He had treated successfully broken bones, spear-wounds
through the body, holes knocked in skulls by the vicious, egg-sized
sling-stones. If the skull was merely cracked, with no smashing of
the bone, he drilled holes at the end of each crack to prevent
further cleavage and, replacing the skin he had folded back, bound
the head with cooling leaves and left nature to cure the break. I