Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

“‘I see shell,’ I said.

“‘Then dive and bring it up,’ he commanded.

“I said the prayer to Adam and to Birigahama Younga. I breathed long, and I went down. There was in my heart a fear of something strange. The bottom was at seventeen fathoms, a jungle of coral as big as the trees in Tahiti, with black caves and large flowers and sponges, and also many of the pahua, the great shell which closes like a trap and can drown a man. Dropping straightaway, I swam upon a ledge raised above the floor of the lagoon. There was a pair of shells, very large. But where there had been many, only this single pair remained. I moved along the ledge, and found that scores had been ripped from the same bed. A diver sees easily where shells have been.

“‘Robbed!’ I said to myself. ‘There has been a thief here.’ Pukapuka had been closed to diving for six years, and it was forbidden to remove a shell. I swam over the face of the ledge, and was sure I had the sole remaining pair of this bed. I rose to the surface with them.”

The Taote was hanging over the boat with his head in the titea mata, watching me as I came up. As I hung on the boat to breathe, I saw Mauraii regarding him with a hateful eye, and I shook my fist at the fool. The foreigner took the shell quickly, and opened it, pulled the oyster out into a bowl, and searched it. Then with a little cry he held up a pearl, a poe matauiui, big and like a ball, as shiny as an eye. Bigger it was than any pearl I have ever seen. It was perfect in shape, and with a skin like the gleam of the sun on the lagoon. What Mauraii had said of the Taote growing things to make him rich came to my mind, as I saw this wonder-pearl shining in the Taote’s hand. The foreigner for a moment was as mad as Mauraii, and, taking hold of that man’s hand, shook it and shook it.

“‘Ah, Mauraii,’ he shouted, ‘now we are paid for those weeks of hell here! You shall have enough to eat and drink always.’

“He laughed and clapped Mauraii on the shoulder, and the maamaa laughed foolishly, and began to dance in the boat. We had to pull him down, or he would have overturned it.

“‘There are more than a hundred pearls like that,’ said the Taote. ‘I am richer than King Mapuhi, ten times as rich, and I can make all I want. I made it. I worked and worked to find out, and Mauraii put the things in the shell. I am a te Tumu!’

“I did not like that. Te Tumu is the creator. It is wrong to boast like that. And where was Terii, who had gone with Mauraii from Takaroa to Pukapuka? He would share in no wealth. And the madman beside me—what happiness left for him?

“‘I teienei,’ said the Taote, as he rubbed the pearl. ‘Go down and bring up as many as you can. When we did the sowing, I worked in a diver’s dress. I have that machine in those boxes on the cutter. Maybe we should get it, for we will want more seed.’