"It is not difficult," the diver remarked, smiling at my efforts to question him in his own tongue. "If he would take the trouble, the white man could learn as well as we. But one must know how. You say that at six fathoms your head ached and your lungs were bursting. That was because you tired yourself by swimming down instead of letting a weight pull you to the bottom. And perhaps you held all of your breath until you rose—that is wrong. First of all, you must learn never to tire yourself beneath the water, and not to fill your lungs too full before you start. When your time is half up, you must begin to let the air out of your lungs, little by little,—a few bubbles now and then,—so that, as you reach the top, there will be scarcely any air left in you. If your ears ache, swallow; or hold your nose and blow—this will clear the little passages between your nose and ears, and stop the pain. That is all, except that in deep water you must never look up, nor bend your body backward. As for the sharks, there is little danger—not one in a hundred will do you harm. When that one comes, you will know him by the way he swims, and if there is sand or mud on the bottom, you can escape by throwing it up to cloud the water while you pull yourself quickly up the basket-rope. Otherwise you can only take refuge in a crevice of the coral, hoping that the shark will leave you before your lungs go flat. Conger eels are more to be feared; you must watch sharply as you pass the holes where they lie hidden. The big eel's jaws are like the jaws of a dog! If a conger seizes wrist or ankle, it is useless to struggle—ten strong men could not drag one from his hole. Three times, when I was young and careless, I have felt the teeth of the eel; see—my ankles bear the scars to this day. But I remembered what the old men had told me and lay quietly without struggling, till the conger relaxed his jaws to dart forward for a better hold. Each time I tore my ankle free and reached the surface with only the loss of a little blood. But we must get to work—the others are beginning to dive."
The canoes returned to camp in mid-afternoon. The women were waiting to begin their task of cleaning shell, and there were exclamations of wonder as the day's catch was brought ashore. While the men went off to rest, their wives and daughters sat gossiping in little groups, hammering, chipping, and washing the mother-of-pearl. Half of the catch of each canoe had been set aside as my uncle's share, and some of his own people—Ivi, Ofai, and a few men and women from the settlement on Iriatai—set to work to clean it in a space reserved for them. I saw a number of women along the beach, filling the tins from the canoes with sea water, mashing the soft meat between their fingers, and pouring off the mess little by little, as they searched for any pearls that might have been overlooked. My uncle was delighted with the first day's work.
"It is going better than I had hoped," he said, as we sat in his stateroom that evening. "They brought in about two tons of shell to-day, and the quality is superb—nothing like it has ever been seen in this part of the Pacific. Your canoe had no luck, but the others netted four handsome pearls and a number of small ones for the day. That alone proves that there must be something in von Tesmar's theory. I've seen thousands of black-lipped oysters opened without a pearl. Old Maruia found a beauty to-day, with her usual luck. I gave her a thousand dollars for it, and any jeweler in Paris would jump at a chance to offer twice as much. You are smiling, eh, to think of that funny old woman having a thousand dollars, all at once? Why, in the eyes of her people Maruia is a millionaire! Twenty years of diving have made her the owner of a fine plantation, and one of the prettiest villas on Tahiti. Ah—I almost forgot to show you our first pearls."
He leaned over to twirl the knob of the safe, swung open the door, and took from the shelf a small tobacco-tin, which he opened and handed to me. It was lined with cotton and there, lying side by side like tiny eggs in a nest, were four pearls, pale, lustrous, and without a flaw. Three of them were like peas in size and the other was larger than the three together,—I had never seen a pearl of such size and beauty,—shimmering with a soft opalescence in its bed. My uncle took it in his hand, turning it to admire the perfection of its shape.
"You won't see a pearl like this five times in a season," he remarked. "There are many larger ones of greater value, but there is nearly always something wrong with them—a flattened spot, a flaw on the surface, a dullness in orient. Though not of great size, this is a really perfect pearl. If I had a mate for it I could ask my own price for the pair!
"I wish now that I had brought a few more men," he went on, "but I think we can make out by shutting down the copra-making and putting everyone at work. I am going to put Fatu and Ofai to diving, with a couple of stern-men from the village; they say we can find trees to build two or three more canoes. The others will have to work at cleaning shell, and from now on I'm counting on you and Marama to feed us. Tins are all right in an emergency, but it would be absurd to make ourselves ill on canned stuff in a place swarming with excellent fish. There are eight of us on board, counting the new cook, and I want you to supply us with fish. You can begin to-morrow—I'll give you the small canoe and whatever gear you need."
I have always loved fishing since I was old enough to hold a rod and cast out into the surf at home, and now, as I look back on the months spent with my uncle in the South Seas, I know that my happiest memories of Iriatai are of the long hours in a canoe with Marama in the lagoon or on the open sea beyond the reef. It was fishing in unspoiled waters—fishing to dream about in after years. Our primitive tackle, much of which was fashioned by our own hands, did not detract from the charm of the sport, and the background—the land, the sea, the sky—was hauntingly and strangely beautiful.
Some of those nights were unforgettable—calm nights when we lay off the reef from sunset till dawn began to brighten in the east. In all that solitude our lantern was the only light, the only sign of man. Iriatai lay like a shadow on the sea, stretching off vaguely to the south, and the heavens above us were powdered with stars of a brilliance I had never known before. The native boy was a better astronomer than I; he had names for many of the constellations, and strange old stories to tell of them. Castor and Pollux, the Twins, sinking on the horizon to the west, he calledPipiri-Ma—a boy and a girl, he told me, who had lived in very ancient times and who, because of their unkind parents, had fled away to the skies. The Southern Cross wasTatauro; the Scorpion was a great fishhook, flung into the sky after a god had used it to pull up the islands of the Paumotus; the Pleiades, visible in the east an hour before the dawn, he calledMatarii—the Little Eyes, and told me a pretty story of their origin.
Much of our fishing was done at night, when we fished offshore for the great bottom-feeders of the South Pacific: the deep-water albicore, the castor-oil fish, and themanga—a long black creature shaped like an enormous pickerel, with goggle-eyes and rows of formidable teeth.
Our custom was to start an hour before sunset and paddle north to a break between the two long islands, where we dragged our canoe through the ankle-deep wash of the barrier, waited our moment, and slipped out through the surf. The outer face of the reef shelved off steeply, and our line, which reached the bottom at two hundred fathoms, would have reached the reef as well. Marama usually took the stern, paddling gently, while I did the fishing forward. Our bait was fish, saved from the previous day's catch and salted. I chose a morsel large as a man's fist and tied it with strong thread to the point of one of the great wooden hooks used in this deep-sea fishing: a fork of ironwood, six inches from tip to tip, and barbed with a cod-hook lashed on to point down and inward. It was useless, I learned, to fish with an ordinary hook for these dwellers on the bottom. Their habit of swimming down vertically, to seize the bait from above, made necessary the use of our barbaric implement. When my hook was baited, I fastened a large pebble to the line, with a special hitch that Marama had taught me. Coil after coil ran out as the pebble sank, until at last I felt the slackening which told me that it had touched bottom. Hauling up a yard or two, I gave the jerk which freed my coral sinker, and settled myself to wait. Sometimes an hour passed without a strike, and then, when I was least prepared for it, some monster of a hundred pounds seized my hook with a rush that carried my arm elbow-deep into the black water alongside. Hand over hand I brought him slowly to the surface till he lay wallowing beside the canoe, eyes bulging with the release from the pressure of his deep-sea haunts. A blow with the blunt side of our whale-spade ended his struggles, and taking hold by the gills, we tilted the canoe and slid the quivering body inboard.
Sometimes, as my fish neared the surface, I felt a sudden slackening of the line—one of the small sharks that prowled along the reef at night had helped himself, leaving only a bodiless and gaping head upon the hook. Once or twice, when the marauder rose close to our canoe, Marama sprang to his feet in a rage—keen-bladed spade in hand—and ended the shark's life with a cutting blow forward of the eyes. At those times we seized our paddles and made off swiftly for new fishing-grounds; for the scene of the ensuing feast was no place for our light canoe.
Fishing by night meant sleeping through the warm hours of the day. Sometimes, when we wearied of this, the order was reversed and we went out at daybreak to pursue the schools of bonito far offshore. The lures for bonito are made of mother-of-pearl, and the fisherman must carry six or seven different shades to suit the varying conditions of sea and sky. Marama selected half a dozen large pearl-shells, shading from light to dark, and marked with a pencil on the thickest part of each the outline of a small fish. When this was done we took our shell to the shop my uncle had set up ashore, and set to work with vise and hacksaw to cut out the lures. Then came the grinding and polishing, and finally a barbless hook of brass was attached to each, the line made fast to the forward end, and a tuft of coconut fibre bound on across the rear. We tied the lines to a stiff pole of bamboo, ten or twelve feet long and equipped with a ring at the butt end, in which to hook the lures when not in use.
Bonito-fishing was hard work and not unspiced with danger,—the risk of being swamped or blown offshore in a squall,—but it had a fascination of its own. We used to paddle half a mile out to sea and wait in the morning calm, on the lookout for birds. At sunrise the boobies and noddy terns left their roosting-places by hundreds and cruised about over the sea, singly or in little bands, in search of breakfast. We watched them flying this way and that until at last, perhaps a mile away, a dozen noddies began to circle and dive. Then it was time to seize our paddles and strain our backs to make for the birds at top speed. Keener eyes than ours had been on the watch, and before a minute had passed hungry sea-birds were flapping from all directions toward the school of fish. The small fish, pursued by both bonito and birds, were far from remaining stationary; sometimes they sounded and disappeared altogether; sometimes, when our backs were aching with an hour's chase, they swept off to windward at a pace that made us lay down our paddles in despair. There were days when we went home worn out and empty-handed, but there were other days when luck was with us and we drove the canoe into the midst of ravenous schools. Then, while the man forward paddled with all his might, the stern-man faced about, long rod in hand and lure skittering over the waves behind us. A hasty trial proved which shade of mother-of-pearl was most attractive, and next moment fish after fish came tumbling aboard—fat, steel-blue, and vibrant. There were days when we hooked and landed thirty fish in half as many minutes, before we sank down exhausted to rest, leaving the birds to circle off above the foaming sea.
Sometimes, when we could get bait, we enjoyed a sport even more thrilling than bonito-fishing—trolling along the reef at daybreak for tunny, barracuda, and the giant cavally of the Pacific. A silvery species of mullet proved the best lure for the fish that lay in wait in the caverns along the outer edge of the reef, and many of our afternoons were spent in mullet-catching. First of all we prepared a mass of paste, made of flour or arrowroot, and with this for bait, we paddled to a place in the lagoon where the water shoaled to three or four feet over a coral bottom. Our tackle was a stick of light wood eighteen inches long, attached by a trace to twenty feet of line, and fitted with a small hook on a leader at either end. One of us baited the hooks with bits of paste and stood ready to cast the stick, while the other threw pieces of our dough ahead of the motionless canoe. Presently the water would dimple and swirl with rising mullet—it was time to cast. The float lay quietly for a moment—bobbed—jerked disappeared under water, with a pair of fat mullet, as often as not, fast on the hooks. We kept them alive in an openwork basket floating alongside, and towed our catch back to the Tara, in readiness for the morning's fishing.
An hour before sunrise we dragged our canoe over the reef, shot out through the breakers, and paddled to our favorite trolling-grounds—a shoal which ran out a quarter of a mile to sea. Our hook for this kind of fishing was equipped with a leader of piano-wire, which was passed lengthwise through the body of a mullet and pulled through the mouth until the shank of the hook was out of sight. Then the lips were lashed to the wire with a bit of thread and the leader made fast to the end of a hundred yards of heavy line. Arranged in this way and towed at a good pace behind the canoe, the mullet flashed and zigzagged through the water in imitation of a living fish—an imitation so perfect that many a wary old dweller on the reef was deceived and came rushing upward to his death.
The handling of these powerful fish required all our skill, and Marama, being more experienced than I, usually took the stern on trolling-expeditions. Making the line fast to the outrigger-pole which crossed the canoe behind his seat, he gave the word, and we began to paddle our hardest, following the edge of the shoal. As the sun rose, one could look down and see the changing colors of the coral—every fold and crevice clearly visible ten fathoms beneath us. There were certain crannies and caverns where we knew the big fish lay, and as we passed above them we increased our efforts to make speed. In this kind of sport there was no holding the line to feel for a bite; we were never in doubt when a monster tunny or barracuda struck. The canoe quivered with the shock. Sometimes we fought for half an hour while the hooked fish towed us in rushes, this way and that. One old barracuda, I remember,—seven feet long and with the jaws of a shark,—pulled us more than a mile before he lay exhausted at the surface.
We seldom returned from trolling till the trade wind came up at eight or nine o'clock, for a good catch, sufficient for two or three days, meant rest and time for other amusements. The weather was hot of course, and we had no ice, but the native method of cooking—baking over and over again, which improves the flavor with each succeeding day—permitted fish to be kept for as long as a week. On days of leisure we rested, overhauled our tackle, or went in search of the shellfish which abounded at Iriatai.
There were lobsters, crabs, and sea snails on the reef, clams and mussels in the lagoon, and best of all,—to be found on patches of shallow sandy bottom,—there werevaros, creatures whose repulsive English name is "sea centipede." They look like the tail of a lobster, with rows of legs along the sides and a small head, armed with a pair of wicked nippers, said to inflict a poisoned wound. The varo is no beauty, but if it is broiled over a charcoal fire and eaten hot with melted butter, I agreed with my uncle that the sea produced nothing half so good.
One calm morning, when there was a plentiful supply of fish aboard, Marama suggested that we try our luck at varo-fishing and showed me the tackle he had made the afternoon before. It consisted of half a dozen slender sticks of wood to which rows of small fishhooks were lashed, points out. Each stick was provided with a few feet of line and a light float, made fast to the upper end. While I was examining these curious snares, my uncle passed along the deck and stopped at sight of us.
"Going after varos, eh?" he remarked. "The men used to say there were plenty of them here. Good luck to you—we'll have a feast here tonight if you can get some!"
The native boy threw his snares and a few pieces of smelly fish into our canoe and we paddled to the western shore of the lagoon, where a bottom of mud and sand ran out from shore. He allowed the canoe to drift over the shoal while he scanned the bottom through the calm water, clear as glass. Here and there I saw that the sand was pitted with holes, the burrows of various marine creatures; and presently Marama pointed down to one, smaller than the rest and surrounded by a little mound of sand. "That is the dwelling of the varo," he said, "I can tell by its freshness and the smallness of the opening that he is at home."
I held the canoe in place while he took up one of the snares, tied a bit of fish to the upper end, and unwound the short line attached to the float. Then he tucked up his pareu and went overboard. Taking a long breath and working with head and shoulders submerged, he enlarged the mouth of the burrow until its full size was exposed and inserted the baited stick—gently, so as not to alarm the creature inside. Varos were plentiful at this place; we set all our snares within a radius of fifty yards and sat at leisure in the canoe, watching the floats for the first signs of life. We had not long to wait; Marama pointed to one of the floats which was beginning to bob and twitch; a few strokes of the paddle brought us alongside and he went overboard again.
The fishhooks on the snares were lashed on in tiers of three, pointing out and up. The bait was tied to the upper half of the stick, so that in order to get at it, the varo was obliged to pass the uppermost tier of hooks. As it tore the fish with its nippers and crammed the pieces into its mouth, its hard back was against the wall of the burrow and its more vulnerable under-parts in range of the barbs. Marama put his head under water again, seized the end of the stick and held the varo against the side of its hole; then, with a quick pull, he sank his hooks into the creature's under joints and held up the snare with a triumphant shout, the captive struggling and waving its claws. "Take care you are not hurt," he told me as he broke off the nippers. "They cut like scissors and they are poisoned—the wounds will fester and swell for weeks!"
At ten o'clock, when the breeze came up, we paddled back to the schooner with a score of varos in the bottom of our canoe, a feast for all hands.
As we crossed the lagoon Marama spoke to me suddenly at the end of a long silence. "Listen, Tehare," he said,—"Tehare" was as near as he could come to pronouncing my name,—"let us speak together, for there is a plan in my mind. I dare not ask Seroni myself. Fishing is the work he gave me, but he is your father's brother and if you desire to do the thing that I propose, perhaps you will speak to him. You have learned much about our fishing and you see how easy it is to provide for the Tara's needs: two or three nights each week give us more fish than we can use. It is in my mind that on days when there is fish in plenty we might take this canoe and go out with the others to dive. I can dive deeper than one need go in this lagoon, and you can pull up the basket and open shell, since men are not accustomed to diving in your land. We shall get much shell, and perhaps a great pearl like the one Maruia found. What say you—will you ask Seroni?"
My chance came the same afternoon, as we were finishing lunch. At last Uncle Harry lit a cigar and called for coffee. "By Jove!" he remarked as he blew out a cloud of fragrant smoke, "those varos were wonderfully good. I reckon the best restaurant in San Francisco couldn't produce a finer dish!" The moment seemed opportune.
"We can always get plenty when the weather is calm," I said, "in fact it only takes a third of our time to catch more fish than the Tara can use. We were speaking of this to-day and wondering if you wouldn't let us go out with the divers in our spare time; Marama says he has often been down to twelve fathoms, and offers to do the diving if I will open shell. I wish you could let us go—it would be fun and somehow I feel sure that we'd be lucky. Of course, if you'd let me, I'd like to try a little diving myself." My uncle looked at me with a twinkle in his dark eyes.
"I knew you'd ask me that sooner or later," he said. "As a matter of fact I ought not to let you do it—I'm responsible to your father, after all, and old Taura's a good friend of mine. Diving is always a dangerous business, though I don't believe there are any more bad sharks in the lagoon. Still, the other men do it every day, and you two are old enough to take the same risks. If I had youngsters of my own, they'd have to take their chances with the rest—otherwise they'd miss their share of good times and hard knocks, and become the helpless sort of men and women who are no use in the world. Yes, you may go, and dive too, if you wish. But, for my sake, keep your eyes open and be as careful as you can!"
That evening, when the day's work was over and the people lay on mats before their houses, smoking and gossiping in the brief twilight, we went ashore. My uncle led the way to where old Maruia lived with one of her nephews: Teura, a pleasant and amusing boy, who paddled her canoe to the diving-grounds and opened the shell that she brought up. Her house was surrounded by a fence of stakes, inside which a pair of pigs wandered, rooting up the earth. As we opened the gate, I heard her voice give the hospitable shout of "Haere mai!—Come in!"
"I have come to talk with you about Tehare, my nephew," said Uncle Harry, when a mat had been spread and we had taken our places on it, native-fashion. "He and Marama have become so clever at the sea fishing that we are glutted with fish and time hangs heavy on their hands. To-day they have asked me if they might go out and dive for shell with you others; they are strong boys and well grown—it is in my mind to let them go. What think you of the plan? Is Iriatai a lagoon overdangerous for boys?"
The old woman shook her head as she replied.
"There is little danger here," she said. "Ten fathoms would not hurt a child, and the great shark you killed was the only evil shark in the lagoon. And he was not a shark, as I and all the others know! For the rest, we have seen neithertonunor conger eel in all the days we have been diving, though it is well to watch closely, for a tonu is an ill thing to meet! But let them go—they will come to no harm; perhaps they will find a pearl like mine, and in any case the white boy will have strange tales to tell when he returns to his own land. I myself will show them where there is shell in seven fathoms of water—not so much as where we dive, but a good place to begin. Let them beware of the clefts and crevices where an eel might lurk, and avoid the dark caverns in the coral, for it is in such places that the tonu lies in wait. There seems little to fear in Iriatai, but one is never sure. As for pearls, watch always for the great lone oysters crusted with coral and misshapen with old age—parau tahito, we call them, and every diver knows that they contain the finest pearls."
When the divers went out next morning Marama and I went with them, our canoe equipped like the others with basket and weight and line. Maruia, smoking a cigarette in the bow of her canoe while Teura paddled, showed us the way to a patch of shell she had found in shallow water, a quarter of a mile east of where the others were diving. "Drop your anchor here," she said, bending over the gunwale to examine the bottom. "The depth is seven fathoms and there is enough shell to keep you busy, though not so much nor of such great size as in the deeper water where we work. Now I must leave—stay here, you two!"
I weighted the basket with a heavy stone and lowered it till it rested on the bottom, while Marama tucked up his pareu, adjusted his goggles, and fastened the glove on his right hand. Then he went overboard, a grin on his brown good-natured face. I passed him the weight; at the signal, I let go the line and watched him shoot down into the blue and green of the depths. After all, seven fathoms were more than forty feet. I pulled up the lead, coiled the line for the next dive, and waited, watching the figure of my companion, seen dimly in the twilight beneath the canoe, as he moved along the bottom with deliberate motions of the arms and legs. Once I thought I saw him place something in the basket, and finally, when more than two minutes had elapsed, he seized the upright line and pulled himself to the surface. But he gave no shout of exultation as he raised the goggles from his eyes.
"Aué!" he exclaimed, shaking his head, "it is more difficult than I had thought! The oysters are there, but I have not the eyes to see them, nor the art to twist them off the rocks. There is no need to pull up the basket; I got only two oysters, though in all my life I have never stayed longer beneath the water. But I shall learn!"
All through that morning Marama dove with increasing success. It was well for me that he did not send up as much shell as the older divers, for I was clumsy at opening it and so afraid of missing a pearl that I wasted a great deal of time in useless fumbling under the fringes of the oysters. At mid-day I had found no pearls, but the shell Marama had brought up was opened and neatly stacked amidships, and the soft bodies of the oysters were thrown into our kerosene-tin for inspection in the evening.
"I am going to dive this afternoon," I announced to Marama, as we lay resting after lunch.
"That is well," he answered. "I am not accustomed to being so long in the water—my bones are chilled! I will open the shell and you can try your hand as I have done. It is strange down there, and very beautiful, with the coral colored like flowers and the great fish passing close at hand. At first I was a little afraid. Do not let yourself grow discouraged; the shell is hard to see and harder still to wrench off until you learn the trick. Remember that the old divers never look upward—to gaze into the blue water overhead gives one a horror of the depth!"
At last, with a beating heart, I made ready for my first dive. I loved the sun, which had burned my back and shoulders to the color of mahogany, and I wore nothing but a pareu. This savage garment I hitched about my waist as I had seen the others do, before I polished my glasses and fastened the glove tightly on my wrist. Once in the water, I held the lead-line with my left hand and the toes of my left foot, adjusted the goggles to my eyes and gave the signal to let go. I saw Marama's answering grin—felt the water close over my head. Then, gripping the line tightly, I plunged down into a strange purple twilight.
An instant later there was a gentle shock and the line slackened in my hand. I had reached the bottom. My ears ached and the pressure on my chest and stomach made my body feel as if it were being squeezed flat. I could understand now the curiously deliberate movements of the divers, for my limbs seemed weighted with lead—the same feeling I have had in dreams, when to my horror I have found myself unable to avoid the attack of some nightmare monster. I swallowed as I had been instructed, then held my nose and blew. The pains in my head ceased at once.
Frightened and ill at ease, I let go the line and saw the weight ascending through the deep bluish purple of the sea above me, which seemed, like the earth's atmosphere, to extend upward into infinity. There was no sign of the surface—nothing to catch the eye in the break between sea and air. For a moment I was in a panic; it seemed to me that I should never reach the air again, never feel the friendly warmth of the sun nor see the bright sun-lit world above. Then I saw the bottom of the canoe, close over my head. Fifteen or twenty seconds had passed, and though far from feeling at home, I had gained enough assurance to gaze with interest at the strange new world in which I found myself.
Though not so dark as the greater depths I visited later on, there was far less light than I had supposed. The floor of the lagoon, here at seven fathoms, was bathed in a sort of purplish twilight which enabled me to see as clearly, I should say, as on an average moonlight night ashore. But instead of being silvery, like moonlight, the light was purple, and tinged with changing shades of green and blue. The bottom was of dense reef-coral, which dies when sheltered from the breaking sea, but a hundred fantastic varieties of still-water coral grew on the dead madrepore, as vegetation grows on the inanimate earth, and its forms were those of vegetation. Close beneath me I saw little coral plants, fragile as violets or anemones; on a level with my head were leafless shrubs, marvelously colored and perfect in trunk and limb and twig; yonder a giant mushroom, ten feet across and growing on a tall thick stalk, towered above the undergrowth. Shoals of small fish, gay as the bird life of the tropics, drifted through the coral foliage or darted into the shelter of the mushrooms when larger fish passed overhead.
The floor of the lagoon was irregular, seamed by gullies and rising in rough hillocks here and there, and my weighted basket lay at the edge of one of these ravines. By swimming slowly in a horizontal position I could move from place to place without great effort, and hoping to find at least one oyster before I was forced to rise for air, I swam along the brink, scanning the coral sharply for the pearl oysters I knew to be plentiful at this place. A great silver cavally, four feet long and with goggle-eyes as large as dollars, darted out of a gloomy cleft, halted to gaze at me for an instant, passed within a foot of my face, and disappeared in the shadows. The fish gave me a start; in the flurry I let go a good half of my breath, which rose in a string of bubbles toward the air. My lungs were cramped. I had reached the limit of endurance.
I made for the line, seized it with both hands, heaved strongly and felt myself bounding upward like a cork. When my head broke water and I raised the goggles from my eyes, I saw that the native boy was bending over me with an air of concern.
"Another moment," he said, "and I would have gone down after you. You were long on the bottom—I feared that you had been seized with cramps."
"It is strange down there," I answered, a little apologetically, "the pressure—the dim light—I was so interested that I nearly forgot to look for shell and when I did look there was none to be seen."
"It was the same with me at first," declared Marama, smiling, "but if you look closely in the rough places, on piles of coral and along the edges of the gullies, you will see the oysters there by hundreds. It is easy to mistake them for lumps of rock—coral and barnacles grow on them as on the rock itself. They lie open like thepahua(the tridacna clam), but that helps you little, for their fringes are not blue and yellow like the clam's tongue."
I did not waste my strength by climbing into the canoe, but lay in the water resting as I had seen the natives do. When five minutes had passed I put down my glasses and went to the bottom again, and this time I saw two pearl-oysters. I found them at the edge of the gulley, when I was on the point of giving up in despair of seeing the elusive things. They looked for all the world like irregular lumps of coral, projecting like hundreds of other lumps from the rocky wall, and I would have passed without a second glance if one of them had not moved. Though they have no eyes, in our sense of the word, all bivalves which do not habitually lie buried in sand or mud seem to possess a subtle sense of light. As my body passed over the oyster, shutting off the light, the creature was thus mysteriously warned, and instantly its shells closed with a smooth swiftness. Looking more closely, I recognized the outlines of themargaritifera, the pearl oyster, beneath a protective growth of parasites, and grasping it with my gloved hand, I endeavored to wrench it from its fibrous moorings. As I struggled to free it from the coral, the water must have been agitated, for another rough lump closed with the same smooth swift movement, revealing a second great oyster. By this time I had been under nearly a minute, and though I tugged with all my might I was unable to wrench the shell free before I rose.
"I have seen the oysters," I told Marama, as I lay resting in the sunlight, "but try as I would, I could not tear one loose!"
He picked up an opened shell from the bottom of the canoe.
"Take hold thus," he instructed me, "and turn the oyster with a sudden wrench. It is useless to pull. Ah—your left hand is bleeding—take care to use the gloved hand only, for the coral cuts like a knife, and oftentimes the wounds are poisoned."
By the third time down I had gained confidence and was beginning to feel at home on the bottom. Now I remembered the trick of which the Paumotan diver had told me, and when I had been half a minute under water I began to let the air out of my lungs. The native had spoken truly; each little string of bubbles brought its moment of relief and enabled me to go about my work more calmly.
I was beginning to see the oysters now: my eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light. This time I managed to tear off a couple of oysters and put them in the basket before I rose for air. Three dives filled the basket, and when Marama pulled it from the water with its coral-encrusted load, I gave an imitation of the exultant native shout—a cry which brought a grin to my companion's face.
"We are learning," he said mockingly, "but it will be time to shout when we can fill the basket at one dive!"
That afternoon, when we joined the little fleet of canoes to paddle home, Maruia stood up, craning her neck for a look at our catch. "You have done well," she remarked, a smile wrinkling her brown face, "not badly for the first day's diving! I have seen grown men do worse. No pearls? Never mind—you will find them surely. Beginners always have the luck!"
From that day onward the fishing occupied less than a third of our time, and the balance was put in on the lagoon. We learned fast, as boys do, and gradually worked our way into deeper water till we were diving with the rest. Within a few weeks we were bringing in as much shell as the Paumotans, and my uncle was enthusiastic over our success! He could dive with any native, and once or twice, when he had leisure, he sent Marama out alone to fish and accompanied me to the diving-grounds. On those days my uncle's share of the shell went to the native boy's account—growing into a round little sum.
As for me, the diving fascinated me more each day: the beauty and strangeness of the underwater world; the spice of danger—small, but a reality, nevertheless; the thought of the money I was earning; the daily, even hourly, hope of finding a rich pearl, perhaps worth a small fortune. From time to time we found a few small pearls, but when at last good fortune came to us, it came hand in hand with tragedy.
As the nearer shell-patches became worked out, the canoes moved gradually northward, taking the cream of the shell without diving enough to exhaust the beds at any one place. One morning, in the latter part of July, Marama and I anchored close beside Maruia's canoe, on new and very promising grounds. It was my turn to open shell. The Paumotan woman, not ten yards away from me, was loafing that day—letting her nephew dive, for once. Teura was a boy of twenty or twenty-one, a favorite among the natives because of his skill as a musician and his jokes. I had grown fond of him since we had been thrown with the divers, and often went ashore in the evening to chat with old Maruia and listen to her nephew's songs, accompanied by wild native airs on his accordion.
I remember that morning as if it were yesterday. The bottom was at about eleven fathoms, rougher than any part of the lagoon that we had seen. Here and there pinnacles of coral rose to within a few yards of the surface; in the shadowy depths below, the bottom was seamed with crannies and pitted with the mouths of caves. The look of the place, in fact, was by no means reassuring, but the men sent out to survey the bottom reported that the lagoon there was fairly paved with shell.
It had become my habit to take a water glass in the canoe, for by now I was expert at opening the shell, and I found it interesting, in leisure moments, to watch my companion at his work. The depth was too great to see clearly, but I watched Marama plunge feet-first into the shadows, and a moment later, a second string of bubbles told me that Maruia's nephew had followed him down. Vaguely in the depths I could see Marama moving about, a dim moving shadow when his body passed above a patch of sand. Then, before half a minute had passed, the canoe lurched suddenly and sharply—the native boy was pulling himself up the line in desperate haste.
His head broke water. With a heave and a spring that nearly capsized us, he threw himself into the canoe.
"Ah, the great tonu—he nearly had me!" he panted, trembling with excitement. "Aué! Teura! Where is he?"
I snatched up the water glass, and side by side, with our heads close together, we gazed down into the blue water. Hearing the boy's words, Maruia had seized her own glass. Next moment a sudden sharp wail came from her lips. Then I saw the figure of her nephew, mounting his line with great heaves of both hands—and rising deliberately beneath him a monster hideous as a nightmare memory. It was a huge fish, eight or nine feet long and of enormous bulk. Its great spiny head, four feet across and set with a pair of eyes like saucers, terminated in jaws larger than a shark's; its rough body was spotted and brindled in a way that rendered it almost invisible against the coral; its pectoral fins, frilled and spiny as the fins of a sculpin, spread out like wings on either side. It had the look of an incredibly old and gigantic rock-cod—to which family, indeed, I have been told that the tonu belongs.
We watched in terrible suspense, all three of us, Teura was nearing the surface; in another moment he would be safe. The tonu seemed undecided, as if it were following the man out of curiosity rather than pursuing him. I began to breathe more freely. Then when the diver was within twenty feet of us. the fish reared itself suddenly and came rushing up, huge jaws agape.
In a twinkling it was beneath us, so close that the water beneath the canoes swirled with its passage. The next instant the monster flashed downward and the man was gone.
The tonu halted, four or five fathoms down, and lay with gently moving fins. It was then I saw, to my unutterable horror, that Teura's feet and the calves of his legs hung from the creature's twitching jaws.
Another spectator was close at hand. "Aué!" cried old Maruia bitterly, in a choking voice. "Teura is gone! But I shall kill that devil as he has killed my boy!"
She had been baptized—she was a churchgoer and a keeper of the Sabbath day; but now I heard her half chanting a strange invocation, in loud and solemn tones. "She prays to the heathen gods," muttered Marama in an awed whisper, "to Taiao, and to Ruahatu, the old shark-god of her people!"
I glanced up. The woman was standing in the stern of her canoe. She wore her usual diving-dress, a loose gown of cotton over a pareu worn as the men wore theirs. The goggles were on her eyes and she had taken up a heavy fish-spear from its place on the outrigger-poles of the canoe. It was a formidable weapon, a haft of tough black wood tipped with a yard of steel: a tapering lance sharpened to a needle-point. I turned my head to look into the water glass. The great fish lay beneath us, a monstrous vision in the blue twilight below; but now the man's legs had disappeared.
Maruia's canoe came alongside. I heard the outrigger knock softly against our own. Then both canoes rocked violently, and we started at the sound of a heavy plunging splash.
Without a word to us or an instant's hesitation, Maruia had leaped overboard. One hand held a leaden diving-weight and the other gripped the spear, point downward. The fish scarcely moved at the turmoil in the water; the hideous lord of the lagoon was making his meal. Our hearts beat fast as we watched what followed, gazing through our little pane of glass. Swift and straight, the woman went down head-first till she was within two yards of the tonu's back. She let go the weight, which plunged down out of sight among the shadows; she drew herself together and struck—struck squarely where the head joined the misshapen body, a foot behind the monstrous goggle eyes. I saw the steel strike deep—saw Maruia raise herself upright in the water to drive the spear home with both hands on the shaft. The fish started; its jaws gaped wide—the sprawled and mangled body of Teura eddied down toward the coral forty feet below. The wounded monster turned on his side, the shaft of the spear protruding from his spiny back, and swam feebly and aimlessly to the surface, where the divers, now gathering from all sides, put a quick end to his struggles.
Then I heard the eerie diver's whistle close beside our canoe and the voice of Maruia calling to us. "I am going home," she said. "Lend me a hand to put Teura in the canoe." She had been nearly four minutes under water and had brought up with her the body of her boy.
The natives did no more diving that day. Anchors came up, gear was stowed away, and one after another the canoes fell in behind old Maruia, while the wailing of thetangi, the native mourning for the dead, floated across the lagoon. I reached for our own anchor-line, but Marama stopped me with a gesture.
"Wait," he said seriously, "we will go back soon, but first there is something I must tell you."
"Let us go to the Tara," I answered, "and tell Seroni what has happened. This place makes me shudder. I have no more heart for diving to-day."
The native boy looked at me solemnly.
"Like you, I am afraid," he confessed, "but I have seen what moves me more strongly than fear. And I know that our fears are baseless, for my grandfather, who was the most skilled fisherman of Raiatea, has told me many times that where one tonu lives, another is never to be found close by.
"Watch well," he went on, "and move the basket if there is danger, for I am going down once more. In the cave where I first saw the tonu, are twoparau tahito—the old oysters of which the divers speak. They are covered with barnacles, very old and huge, and perhaps they hold pearls—great pearls that will make rich men of you and me. But that cave is an evil place! Teura went down with his back to me, and I saw him reach the bottom close to the entrance of the cavern, which he did not see. Then I looked in, and my heart beat fast as I saw that pair of old oysters, just inside. I looked more closely, and there in the shadows were the eyes of the tonu watching me, and his great jaws opening as he made ready to rush out. For a moment my limbs were paralyzed! The rest you saw."
I was becoming infected with my companion's excitement. Ever since we had begun to dive I had heard stories of famous pearls, taken throughout the group in years gone by, and the pearls which fetched the greatest sums and made immortal the names of their finders had always come from these huge, old, and sickly-looking oysters, growing apart from the rest.
Marama had picked up his goggles and was making ready to go over the side, when a saying of my uncle's flashed across my mind. "Never let one of your men do a job you're afraid to do yourself!" Then all at once I knew that I should have no peace unless I acted quickly.
"Stop," I said—a little shakily, at the prospect of the task before me. "You have been down once. Now it is my turn!"
All my life I have found that the more one fears a thing, the quicker it should be done. Without heeding Marama's protests, I snapped on my glasses, tucked up my waistcloth, and went overboard. Next moment I seized the lead-line and signaled Marama to let go.
Never, before or since, have I been more afraid than on that day, as the weight took me plunging down into a bluish gloom. The bottom, as I have said, was at about eleven fathoms,—close to seventy feet,—and since the coral was of the dark-purple kind, the light was very dim. When my weight struck the coral my heart was beating so that I nearly choked; I lost my bearings and wasted half a minute before I found the entrance of the tonu's cave. Suddenly, five yards ahead of me, I perceived the dark mouth of the cavern, like a low wide doorway, fringed with pink coral and gently waving weeds. As I stared into the darkness which seemed to fill a vast chamber, I felt a prickling at the roots of my hair—what if the tonu had a mate.
Then, dimly in the gloom, I made out the forms of the two great oysters, their barnacled and crusted shells agape. I moved forward to wrench them from the rock. With one in each hand I swam toward the basket, glancing back fearfully as went. There was no shout of triumph when I reached the surface—I flung myself into the canoe and lay there while Marama pulled up the basket.
"You got them?" he inquired eagerly, without turning his head in my direction.
"They are In the basket," I said, "but if I had not found them, I would not have gone down again!"
"My stomach was cold at the thought of it. Come—let us open the shell and leave this evil place. I can scarce wait to see what is inside!"
"You take one," I suggested, "and I will open the other."
"Yes!" he answered, with a boy's eagerness to prolong the moment of suspense, "I will open mine first, and when we have seen what it contains, you can look into the other one."
He inserted his knife close to the hinge, severed the muscle connecting the shells, and laid the great oyster open on the bottom of the canoe. His fingers, skilled with long practice, went under the fringing mantle where nearly all pearls are found, searching rapidly and in vain. He felt more carefully—uttered an exclamation of disgust.
"There is nothing," he said mournfully, "not so much as a blister pearl!"
I took my knife and opened the oyster he had handed me. It was very old and diseased; the shells seemed half rotten, pierced with the holes of borers, and the flesh of the creature inside had a sickly, greenish look. My forefinger went under the mantle—felt something hard and smooth, which moved loosely at the touch. Next moment I laid in Marama's hand a magnificent pearl, the size of a marble, round, flawless, and glimmering with the sheen of perfect orient.
We gazed at it, awed by our good fortune. A man might spend years among the atolls without laying eyes on a pearl one half so beautiful! My fingers had gone back to the oyster to complete the habitual inspection when Marama found his voice.
"With such a pearl," he said softly, "a man could buy a schooner like the Tara, or an entire island for himself! Not one of the divers has ever seen its match, nor—"
I interrupted him with a frenzied shout, as I laid in the palm of his hand, beside the first pearl, a second one—its twin in size, in color, in lustre, and perfection of form.
"Marama," I said when we had grown a little calmer, "we must say nothing of this to anyone except Seroni. I know little of pearls, but the value of this matched pair is too great to be made known. The sight of them would tempt a man to things he might regret."
Our mood of exultation was quenched by the wailing of mourners as we passed the islet, and the sight of my uncle's sober face when he met us at the Tara's rail. "I'm glad you came in," he said. "This has been a bad day and I'm feeling anxious and depressed. Teura—poor devil; he was one of the best of the lot; I've known him since he was a lad at school. This business won't stop the diving, of course,—it's all part of the day's work to them,—but it's a pity that such a tragedy has come to spoil our season at Iriatai. I've been jumpy as an old woman since the canoes came in—a silly idea that you might have gone on diving and that there might have been another of those damned tonus about!"
"We want to have a talk with you, Uncle Harry," I said. "Can we go down to your stateroom—all three of us?"
I followed my uncle and Marama into the stateroom and closed the door behind me. Then I unrolled the tuck of my pareu, opened a knotted handkerchief and laid on the table the twin pearls of the tonu's cave. My uncle's dark brilliant eyes opened wide, his eyebrows went up, and he whistled a soft and long-drawn note. Without a word he took up first one pearl and then the other, turning them in his fingers and letting the light play over their gleaming and flawless surfaces.
"By Jove!" he exclaimed at last, "you take my breath away! I reckon this is the most beautiful matched pair that ever came out of the Paumotus—by long, long odds! In Paris, on the Rue de la Paix, the jewelers would fight one another for a chance to bid on them! You can't set a price on a pair of pearls like these. One of them by itself would make you independent in a small way; the fact that they're matched probably doubles the value of each." He turned to the native boy. "Eh Marama," he said to him, in his own tongue; "you are a lucky boy! This morning's work will make you the richest man of Raiatea, with a fine house, a cutter, and plantations enough to keep all your relatives in plenty. But say nothing of this, for not all men are good at heart."
"Of course they are yours," he went on in English, "to do with as you wish; but I advise you two to let me handle this matter for you. They must be sold as a pair, and I know a Jew on Tahiti who will give us the top of the market. He is buyer for one of the largest firms in Paris, and in a case like this, something more than money is involved. These pearls will make history, you will see; I haven't a doubt they'll end among the jewels of some European court. Sikorsky knows me and knows that I know the game; it will be a matter of naming our own price, within reason, for the acquisition of such a pair of pearls would be a tremendous feather in his cap. Come, we must christen them, for pearls of real importance are always named. What do you say to calling them theMarama Twins? Marama means the moon, and their orient has the pure, pale glimmer of moonlight. What beautiful things! If I were a rich man I'd take them off your hands myself!
"See—we'll put them in cotton-wool in this tobacco-tin, and stow it away in the safe. The less said the better, I fancy, even among ourselves. Such a temptation might prove too much for almost any man! But tell me about Teura—his aunt was too much cut up to talk."
Marama left us to go on deck while I told my uncle the story of the morning's happenings. He shook his head when I told of how the canoes had gone home, and of our resolution to go down after the two old oysters Marama had seen. Then I spoke of my feeling that I must be the one to dive, and how I had gone down to bring up the oysters from the tonu's cave.
"I know what you mean," he remarked, as I concluded, "and you did the right thing; but don't take such chances very often! You'll have to keep on diving for a few days, if only for the sake of public morale, but I wish you'd slack off gradually and give it up altogether in a week or two."
I went on deck that night and lay alone in the warm darkness, building castles in Spain. Every lad has dreamed of all that he would do for his parents when he had gone out into the world and made his fortune, and now my dreams seemed to have come true at last. I thought of my mother, and the things I might do to brighten the dullness of her life; of Marion, and how my good fortune would send her to the Eastern school she longed for; of my father, who had dreamed for years of improving and restocking the ranch. The old Santa Brigida where I had been born and where I hoped to end my days—a sudden understanding came to me, a rush of gratitude for my father's determined clinging to our land. I realized as never before how I loved the valley, the brown hills, the lonely stretch of coast. A home to go back to—that was the best thing in life!
Teura was to be buried in the morning, and no man on the islet slept that night. After the native fashion the divers were assembled at Maruia's house, and all night long their wild and melancholy songs floated out across the water. The hymns of the islanders have a power to stir one strangely: the voices of the women wailing in a minor key, the deep, chanting refrain of the men—gradually, under the influence of their music, my thoughts wandered, and I fell asleep.
The natives observe Sunday with a strictness unknown among more civilized Christian races. Saving a few unavoidable tasks like cooking, no work of any kind is done on that day, and the man bold enough to break the rule would make an outcast of himself. If he went fishing, they believe that his fishing would be accursed; if by any chance he caught a fish, its flesh would be poisonous; and in all probability a shark would be sent to overturn his canoe and make an end of the impious Sabbath-breaker. White men are a law unto themselves, of course, but my uncle had warned me long since that it would be a mistake to urge Marama to break the rules of his religion. Our Sundays, therefore, were what Sundays should be—days of rest and change from the occupations of the week.
Marama and I often persuaded the cook to put up a cold lunch for us, and set out in our canoe to explore the distant portions of the lagoon. To amuse ourselves, and for easier traveling on these occasions, we had rigged a sail—a bamboo mast, a big leg-of-mutton sail of unbleached cotton, and a spar of tough light wood. We selected from the Tara's stock of lumber a long two-inch plank, and when we set out for a day's sailing this plank was lashed to the canoe—one end to the outrigger, the middle to the gunwales, and the other projecting up and out, six feet on the starboard beam. We carried a tremendous spread of sail for so small a craft, and the long narrow canoe, with a fresh breeze astern or on the beam, skimmed the lagoon at a speed that delighted our hearts. One of us managed the sheet and steered with an oar from the whaleboat; the other took his place on the plank, changing sides when we tacked, and crawling out on the weather beam when the wind freshened and the canoe lay over—bounding forward to rush through the water with a tearing sound.
On the Sunday after Teura's burial, we took our lunch and set out for an all-day sail, and toward the middle of the afternoon the trade wind fell away and died. We were on the west side of the lagoon, a mile or two north of the village of the copra-makers, built on the site of the ancient Paumotan settlement. It was the first time that we had passed close to the place where the shark had met his death, and as we paddled slowly along the coral cliffs rising almost to the surface, we watched for the opening of the cave.
Finally, through the calm blue water, not more than ten or twelve feet down, we saw the mouth of the cavern where the monster had taken refuge. The palms alongshore almost overhung the lagoon at this place. The fringing reef which fell away in a line of submarine cliffs was only a few yards wide, and beyond it lay the highest land on Iriatai, the path of an ancient hurricane where the breaching seas of centuries ago had piled great blocks and masses of coral to a height of eight or ten yards above the sea. Marama dropped his paddle and took up a pair of water goggles.
"Hold the canoe here a moment," he said; "I am going overboard for a look. There was only one shark and I do not believe that a tonu would live so close to the surface."
Next moment he was over the side and swimming down toward the cave-mouth, into which I saw his body disappear. Presently, with leisurely strokes, he swam into sunlit water and rose to take breath, with a hand on the gunwale of the canoe. "Have patience a little longer," he said with a smile, as he pulled down his goggles for the second time. "I am going down once more."
Again he disappeared, and again I waited idly for his reappearance. A minute passed; a minute and a half; two minutes. I began to be alarmed. Three minutes were gone. I knew that never before had my friend stayed down so long. Four minutes—I hauled up the canoe in the shallows, snapped on my glasses and plunged down to the entrance of the cavern. As I peered in anxiously, I saw that there was a strange glimmer of light where only darkness should have been. Suddenly the light was blotted out, and Marama emerged from the tunnel and rose with me to the surface of the lagoon. When we had taken breath, his hand went up to interrupt my hasty demand for an explanation.
"Aué!" he exclaimed in an excited voice, "but that is a strange place! The hole in the coral rises as it runs inward, and seeing light ahead I thought that I would swim in a little way. The light grew stronger; all at once my head was out of water and I was breathing air. When I pushed up my glasses to look about me, I found that I was swimming in the midst of a great pool, arched over with a low ceiling of rock. At the farther end a single ray of sunlight shines through a crack between two wedged-in boulders, and beneath the light I saw a broad ledge, sandy and high above the water. On that ledge, where a hundred might stand together, are things of the old times: a heathen god, spears, stone axes, the whitened heads of men. I am afraid, but I will go back if you desire to see."
A sudden memory flashed into my mind—the scent of wood-smoke; the long, shadowy living room at home; my uncle lying in a rawhide chair with his feet against the stones of the fireplace; the missing brig; the savages of Iriatai; the story of the searching-party—beyond doubt we had stumbled on the cave where the cannibals took refuge on that day so long ago!
"There is nothing to fear in old bones," I said. "Lead the way, if you are not weary, and I will follow close behind."
Marama ducked under like a rolling porpoise, to swim down the face of the cliff with long easy strokes, and I swam after him down the cliff and into the faintly luminous gloom. The light grew stronger as we advanced; twenty yards from the entrance my head came out of water and I breathed the welcome air again. We were swimming in a black pool which half filled a long shadowy cavern, illuminated by a beam of sunlight filtering in through a cranny in the rocks. Stalactites of fantastic shape hung from the low roof, and I saw the broad ledge of which the native boy had spoken. We were in the hidden refuge of the savages, the lurking-place of the terrible carcharodon, the shark which had come so near to making an end of my uncle during our early days on Iriatai!
It was an eerie place. We swam to the far end, and my heart was beating faster than usual when my feet touched bottom and we walked out, side by side, upon the ledge. A glance showed me that the place had been a heathen temple of some sort. Under the hole which admitted light stood a small platform of roughhewn coral blocks, a kind ofmarae, like others to be found throughout the Polynesian islands. On the platform, with his misshapen back to the ray of afternoon sunlight, squatted a hideous little god of stone, leering and monstrous, with hands folded on his belly and with a grinning mouth. A semicircle of crumbling skulls lay about the idol, and leaning against the rocky wall I saw carved war-clubs, beautifully fashioned spears, and axes of polished stone. Marama touched my arm.
"Let us go," he whispered. "This is an ill place, indeed! I have heard the old men's tales of the days when there were still wild people in the Paumotus; without doubt thattikiis Ruahatu, to whom you heard old Maruia pray. These heads are the heads of men slain here in sacrifice—their bodies were offered toAtua Mao, the shark god. Let us go!"
That night, when I was telling my uncle of the cavern, Maruia came aboard to show him a pearl that she had found. Her eyes gleamed as he translated to her the story of our adventure, and she nodded her head violently in confirmation of each fresh detail.
"Aye," she remarked at the end; "It was thus in the old days among the Paumotan people. On my island, Matahiva, we had such a place; my father has told me how in his childhood the women took refuge there when the warriors went out to meet the men of Rangiroa, raiding in their great canoes. And that stone god was Ruahatu, the Lord of Sharks. For know that the shark you killed was not a shark, nor would you have killed him had you not been a white man! You smile—but I am speaking true words. For a hundred years, two hundred, since time beyond reckoning, perhaps, he has lived in that cave and fattened on the bodies of men, cast to him by the priests. Yet his own people might swim about him fearlessly, for he knew them, and they were of his clan. One of my own ancestors, after his death, took on the semblance of a shark!"
"You'll have an interesting yarn to tell at home," said my uncle, when the woman was gone. "I've heard of these Paumotan refuge-caves, but I never knew a man who had laid eyes on one. Some Sunday we'll run down for a look. I'd like to get those weapons for my collection in Tahiti."
In those days Marama and I were accounted among the skilled fishermen of the island, and a few weeks after we explored the shark's cave, we decided to make an expedition after a fish seldom captured in the South Seas—the dolphin, or dorado, which the natives calledmahimahi. He is a noble fish, swift, predatory, and difficult of approach, a rover of the open sea, where his pursuit requires no small degree of hardihood and skill. And the dolphin's flesh is delicate above all other fish—a feast for island kings before the white man came. Pahuri, the Tara's wrinkled engineer, gave us the idea of dolphin-fishing: we were listening to his yarns one night when he chanced to speak of the mahimahi.
"Aye," he said, as he twisted a bit of tobacco in a pandanus-leaf, "there is one fish that you have never caught! How many men on this island have tasted of the dolphin? Not you—nor you?" We shook our heads.
"When I was a boy in the Cook Islands," he went on reminiscently, "that fish was often in the oven at my father's house. In those days the men had not grown lazy and timid, clinging to the land. For it needs a man to bring the dolphin home: he is not to be found in a few fathoms of water close to shore! The mahimahi is the swiftest of all fish and the most beautiful, with his colors of blue and green, changing like flame. He ranges far out to sea in little bands—three or four males and as many females together. You will know them apart easily, for the male will often weigh a hundred pounds, while his mate is never more than half his size. How can you find the dolphin? Listen and I will tell you—I have forgotten more of fishing-lore than these others will know in all their lives!
"Paddle offshore a mile, two miles, three miles, and wait in the early morning calm, when the birds fly out to feed. When you see theitatae, the small, pure white tern, watch carefully! Remember that the brown noddy-tern, which follows the bonito, never circles above the mahimahi. But if you see four or five white birds circling low and fast above the waves, hasten to that place and make ready for the dolphin-fishing. As for bait, flying-fish is good, but I will tell you a secret. Above all other food, the mahimahi loves the lobster! Take with you the white meat from the tails of the lobsters, and when your canoe is close to the birds throw this bait into the water directly under them. Then watch closely and you will see the dolphin dart up from the depths like a living flame! Let your baited hook sink slowly and presently a fish will seize it, but you must handle him gently, for he is very swift and strong. If one is taken, the others will stay about the canoe, and you will catch them all. You are going to try? I would go with you if I had time—it is work from daybreak to darkness!"
That night we made torches of dried coconut-leaves, bound in long bundles, and paddled out to the reef separating the two islands north of camp. There was a new moon, by good luck—the best time of the month for lobsters and other dwellers on the barrier. We wore rope-soled shoes to protect our feet from the sharp spines of sea urchins, and when we had anchored the canoe in shallow water we walked abreast along the outer edge of the reef, brightly illuminated by our torches. When a comber toppled and crashed, sending a foaming rush of water across the coral, we halted and waited till the water cleared in the interval before the next breaker came rolling in. Then we walked slowly, bending to scan each weedy crevice and hole. Sometimes a lobster darted like a flash from his refuge and was gone; sometimes the torchlight reflected from a pair of stalk-eyes betrayed our quarry in time for us to press a foot down on the lobster's back, seize him warily from behind, and toss him into the gaping sack. In an hour we had more than we could use.
The stars were shining and there was only the faintest glimmer of dawn, when we dragged our canoe over the reef and shot out seaward through the breakers. Gradually, as we left Iriatai behind us, the eastern sky paled, grew luminous, flushed a rosy pink. The sea changed from black to gray, and from gray to blue—a new day had begun. Around the vast circle of the horizon, saving in the west, where masses of dark cloud towered to a great height, light scattered trade-wind clouds hung above the line where sea met sky.
"I do not like the look of the weather," remarked Marama, glancing westward; "there is wind in those clouds, and if they draw nearer we must return in haste. But the sea is calm, so let us go about our fishing for an hour or two."
We were perhaps four miles offshore. The palms of Iriatai lay like a low smudge along the horizon to the south of us. Singly and in twos and threes, the birds had left their roosting-places ashore and were flying this way and that over the sea, on the lookout for schools of fish. There were boobies and noddy terns in plenty, and a few of the small snow-white terns on which we kept a special watch. Suddenly, a quarter of a mile from us, a pair of noddies began to circle and dive; other birds came flapping hastily from all directions, and soon hundreds of them were wheeling and plunging through the air.
"Bonito," said my companion, heading the canoe toward the school. "Let us make sure of not returning empty-handed!"
It was an old game to me, but one of which I never wearied. We bent our backs and dug our paddles into the sea. The light canoe flew over the swells at a pace that left a wake of foam. I heard Marama drop his paddle; knew that he had turned to face the stern and taken the long bamboo pole from its place on the outrigger-supports. "Hoe! Hoe!" he cried. "Paddle your hardest—the school is turning, and in a moment we shall be among them!"
Now the birds were all about us, and the sea was alive with the small fish on which birds and bonito feed, leaping and flashing by thousands in a frenzy of fear. A bonito leaped with a heavy plunge, close to the canoe—another—another; next moment an acre of sea was churned into foam as they fell upon their prey like wolves. I was in the bow place, and now my efforts were redoubled, for everything depended on keeping the canoe in rapid motion. Marama was seated on the stern thwart, facing the rear. In his right hand he held the butt of the rod, braced against the thwart. As the sun was bright, he had selected a dark lure,—a piece of greenish-black mother-of-pearl, fashioned in the shape of a four-inch minnow,—and it skittered along behind us in an extraordinary lifelike way. Cupping his left hand, Marama leaned over the side and began to throw water over the lure, five yards astern—a custom believed to attract the fish. I heard a shout—a fat bonito came tumbling through the air and thumped into the bottom of the canoe. Next instant the hook was free and over the side again, and the native boy was calling: "Paddle! Paddle! You are letting them draw away from us!" For a quarter of an hour, with aching muscles and a dry throat, I held the canoe on the outskirts of the school. At last the pace became too much for me, and I dropped my paddle as the rearmost birds left us in their wake.
We sank into the bottom of the canoe and lay there panting. Marama was worn out, for bonito-fishing is a strenuous sport. In fifteen minutes, after paddling five hundred yards at racing speed, he had hooked and swung into our canoe nearly a score of fish, averaging seven or eight pounds each! It was still calm, and the dugout rose and fell gently on the swell as we lay there resting. The bank of black clouds was moving imperceptibly toward us, blotting out the horizon with an ominous violet gloom. It was time that we went home and I was about to speak when I saw Marama was pointing eastward.
"The dolphin!" he exclaimed, as my eye caught the glint of half a dozen small white birds circling rapidly above the sea. "Shall we paddle out yonder for a try, or shall we leave the mahimahi for another day?"
"Let us chance it," I suggested. "Pahuri knows, and from what he said there must be dolphin yonder. It may be a long time before we see the white birds circle again!"
We were young and far from prudent. In spite of the approaching squall, we headed the canoe away from land and strained at our paddles anew. When first sighted, the birds were not more than half a mile distant, but they were moving slowly away from us, and twice, before we caught up, the fish must have sounded, for the terns ceased their feeding and flew about uncertainly till they fell to circling again. At last the birds were diving fearlessly about the canoe—beautiful little creatures, smaller than a pigeon, with pointed wings and dark, incurious eyes. Remembering Pahuri's advice, I baited my hook and stood up in the bow to throw out morsels of lobster. Then I swung the line around my head and cast far out in front of the canoe.
"Te mahimahi!" cried Marama excitedly; and I saw a great fish, gleaming with the colors of a fire opal, dart up from the depths, seize a morsel of bait, and disappear. At that instant the line tautened with a jerk that cut the skin of my hand: I was fast to my first dolphin.
He seemed strong as a wild horse. Fathom after fathom of line hissed over the gunwale and into the sea, at a speed that brought a shout to Marama's lips. Then the fish turned and shot up to the surface, rushing this way and that—a streaking flame of azure in the sea. As the line shortened, Marama leaned over the side, long-handled gaff in hand. The dolphin was growing weary; still fighting, but at a slowing pace, he passed close to the side of the canoe—and the native boy's arm shot out. The dugout lurched and nearly capsized as he brought the fish alongside, the gaff deep-buried in the gleaming back. A stroke of the club, a dying quiver, and we seized gills and tail to drag the fish aboard, exclaiming in excited admiration at the play of gorgeous color on his sides.
I had forgotten the impending squall, and now, as I glanced back toward Iriatai, I saw that there was no land in sight. Sea and sky were merged in a thick gloom; the air stirred uneasily; the black clouds were almost overhead. Marama was cutting short lengths of fishline to make fast the loose articles in the canoe; the fish-blub, the baler, the gaff. He passed me a bit of line. "Tie one end to the thwart and the other to your paddle," he said, "and remember that if we swamp there will be no cause for fear—there is small chance that the sharks will find us. Three times have I been swamped at sea, and each time we lay in the water till the waves had calmed, and reached the land without mishap. Look well to the outrigger-lashings forward there—a turn of line might make them more secure."
I doubt if any other type of craft as small and light would have weathered what our canoe went through in the half hour that followed. Long before the wind reached us we could hear the moaning sound of it and see an unbroken line of white advancing across the face of the sea. Then, after a sharp preliminary gust, the squall was on us, shrieking and raving out of the west.