Six prize Hawaiian stories of the Kilohana Art League

by Emma Louise Smith Dillingham; William N. Armstrong; George Harrison De La Vergne; James W. Girvin

While the Julian was off the island of Juan Fernandez, Peleg had studied the numerous sharks found there. He discovered that the many rows of teeth in the mouth of the female shark were flexible, and rested on elastic gums. They could be laid flat, at the will of the shark. The reason for this curious arrangement was this. Whenever the young sharks are in danger, the mother shark opens her mouth, lays down her teeth, and the young sharks pass over without danger, into a pouch in her body where they remain until the danger is over. He had counted as many as seventy, each of them about three feet long, at one time diving into their mother's mouth, and emerging after the danger was over. He remembered that Prof. Aggasiz or some noted naturalist, had suggested that in some remote period a female kangaroo had tumbled overboard from some prehistoric canoe, and, according to Mr. Darwin, had adapted itself to the new environment, and become a shark. The pouch for the young which appears on the outside in the case of the kangaroo, appears as a pouch on the inside of the shark.

Peleg learned from the natives that at times fish were very scare in the Honolulu market. During the visits of the whaling fleets which often numbered over a hundred vessels, the demand could not be supplied with any regularity. When there was bad weather, the canoes could not put out to sea, and there was a fish famine excepting so far as it could be supplied from the local fish ponds that were entirely owned by the chiefs and King.

Besides there were some rare fish which the chiefs were especially fond of which were found only in deep water and could only be obtained under the most favorable circumstances of tide and weather. Such were the Kawele-a, the Ahi, the Ono and the Omaka. The Ahi was a very delicate fish and was found only off the coast of Hawaii, and was seldom seen in Honolulu markets.

Peleg said to himself: "Why not train sharks to catch fish? It may be as dad said, some bother to find out their way of thinkin' and they live in the water. But they has eyes and ears, and they hasn't got them things for nothing."

He caught, with the aid of some natives, an immense female shark, and before the young ones could hide, he captured them all, and put them in a pond he built up in the water. He began to educate them. At first they were quite vicious, and refused to be cheerful. But Peleg knew that from the crab to the seraphim, the appeal to the appetite was most effective. After repeated experiments, he found that sharks had a most extraordinary fondness for salt pork. There was a monotony of freshness in their ordinary diet, excepting as a sailor with a rich tobacco flavor, fell in their way once in a while. He also discovered that the addition of beans to the pork made the food especially attractive, and the young sharks quickly submitted to discipline with this reward before them.

He saw that they thought in their crude way, just as dogs and birds thought, and their hearing was like that of other animals. By tapping stones under water he could call them, but he generally used a speaking tube which he thrust into the water. By using rags of different colors, he trained them to distinguish between colors. He taught them to fetch and carry sticks, and then pieces of meat. As they grew older, he trained them to search for fish in the bay, and to bring them in without injuring them as they took them in or cast them out of their pouches. Pork and beans were liberally used as rewards. He was finally successful in teaching them to distinguish between the grades of fish and as it were, take orders for special kinds and leave the rest. The most intelligent learned to travel long distances, even to Maui and Hawaii, and find the feeding grounds of the rare fish of which he kept samples in a pond, and exhibited to them whenever he desired a supply of that variety.

He never permitted the natives to watch him while in his training school. He gave names to the expert and reliable sharks. His reading was limited so that he selected names from the Bible and from the names of the towns near his home. He called them "Lenox belle," "Barrington belle," "Pittsfield belle," "Lee belle," "Bashbish belle," "Stockbridge belle," and many other Berkshire names were used. The Scriptural names were "Queen of Sheba," "Jezabel," "Mehita-bel" and "Assyrian girl," with other such names. The word "belle" appealed to his poetic instinct.

He graduated the sharks after two years of training, and then opened business. He purchased a canoe, and paddled out to sea, followed by more than twenty submissive fish. He sent them off singly or by battalion, as he called it. In the battalion form, they moved out on an extended line and drove the fish desired towards the caves and small inlets, where they were easily caught, taken into the pouches, and brought to Peleg's canoe, and pork and beans were liberally served out in return.

On the arrival of the next whaling fleet, Peleg entered Honolulu harbor every morning with a large load of mullet in his canoe or with other excellent fish. After disposing of them to the whalers, he put out of the harbor at once, and joined his "sea hounds" as he called them, who waited for him outside the reef. His enormous catches attracted the attention of the natives, who once followed him in the hope of finding his rich fishing grounds. They were especially surprised at his large catch during stormy weather, when they could not go out in their canoes. Nor, by watching Hanauma bay could they get any information, as there were no nets there, and the sharks attracted no attention.

On one occasion as he was paddling along the Waikiki shore after selling his load of fish, he met a fleet of native canoes that had no luck. Taking compassion on them, he dipped his tube under water, gave the sign for mullet to his sea dogs, shipped his paddle, and lit his pipe. In an hour the noses of his hunters rubbed against the side of the canoe, and leaning over, he pulled out of their mouths more than six hundred pounds of mullet, and threw them into the canoes of the natives. The natives were stricken with terror at the sight, and dropped their paddles with the exclamation: "He is a kahuna (sorcerer) of the shark god."