"_Requin!_" echoed Tetuahunahuna in French. "The devil of the
Marquesas!"

"But you are not afraid of them. You swim where they are," said I.

"Few of us are bitten by sharks," said Tetuahunahuna, sizing up a
puff of wind that brought a faint hope. It died, and he continued.
"We are often in the sea, and do not fear the _mako_ enough to make
us weak against him. I have killed many with a knife. I have tied
ropes about their bellies and made them feel silly as we pulled them
in. I have tickled their bellies with the point of the knife that
slit them later. They are awkward, they must turn over to bite, and
they are afraid of a man swimming. But they are devils, and hate
women. They do not like men, but women they will go far to kill."

He took the cigarette Ghost Girl handed him and, squatting on the
rudder deck, looked at me to see if I were interested. Wretched as I
felt, I returned his glance, and said "_Tiatohoa?_" which means,
"Is that so?" and showed that I was attentive.

"It is so," he replied. "There are reasons for this. In times before
the memory of man a shark-god was deceived by a woman. In his anger
he overturned an island, but this did not appease his hate. Since
that time all sharks have preyed on women."

Sister of Anne moved restlessly in her sleep and put her
_ena_-covered feet across my knees, feet as hot as an iron
pump-handle on a July noon.

"_Hakaia!_" exclaimed Ghost Girl, and hung the feet over the side.

"Sharks will let men live to kill women," Tetuahunahuna resumed.
"There are many proofs of this, but most convincing is a happening
that every one in Tai-o-hae and Nuka-hiva knows, because it happened
only a few years ago. I saw that happening."

I looked at him with attention, and after a few puffs of smoke he
continued.

"You may think, you who use the Iron Fingers That Make Words, that
the shark does not know the difference between men and women. I have
seen it, and I will tell you honestly. I have thought often of it,
for all who live in Tai-o-hae know that woman, and her foster-sister
sits there with the _ena_ upon her. She does not lie in the cemetery,
this girl of whom I speak, nor is her body beside that of her
fathers in the _ua tupapau_. Her name was Anna, a name for your
country, _fenua Menike_, for her father was captain of a vessel with
three masts that came from Newbeddifordimass, a place where all the
Menike ships that hunt the whale came from. Her mother was O Take O