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."
X
THE CHOLITA COMES TO IRIATAI
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 called mahimahi. 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 the itatae, 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.