As I floated at ease upon the quiet surface of the pale-green lagoon, the sounds of the murmurous twilight—the rustling of the trees and the splash of the surf on the outer shore—were made discordant by a peculiar scraping noise near-by. I turned lazily over on my face and raised my head from the water.
On the coral in the deceptive half-light of the crepuscule was a hideous, shell-backed monster, which had emerged from an unseen lair, and moved slowly and lumberingly toward the cocoanut-trees. Its motions and appearance, in the semi-obscurity, took on the quality of a dream-beast, affrighting in its amazing novelty. It was like a great paper-mâché animal in a pantomine.
I was beset by apprehension that it might advance to the lagoon and approach me in an element in which it would be my master. I swam swiftly to shore and called, “Nohea!”
My companion came from near our hut, where on the red-hot coral stones, which had been made to glow by a fire of cocoanut-husks, he cooked the fish he had caught that afternoon.
He looked at me inquiringly, and I pointed to the alarming creature now disappearing in the palm-grove.
“Aue!” he cried irascibly, and sprang after the nightmare. When I overtook him, he was standing at the foot of a lofty cocoanut-tree and shaking his fist at the object of his pursuit, which was climbing with unbelievable speed up the slippery gray trunk.
“I teienei! It is the kaveu, that devil of the night who robs us of our cocoanuts while we sleep. But wait! I made a vow to destroy the next one I found thieving!”
Nohea went a hundred yards to where a banana plant was growing in earth brought from Tahiti. He gathered clay and leaves, and with painstaking effort fashioned a wreath of the mixture six inches wide and several feet in length. I stood in wonderment, guessing that he was making a charm to bring about the death of the despoiler of the groves.
Nohea took a length of coir, the rope the Paumotuans make of cocoanut-fiber,—from the tree which feeds them, clothes them, and houses them,—and, tying it into a girdle but little larger than the girth of the palm, put it about his wrists. The cocoanut-tree had, at regular intervals upon its trunk, projecting bands of its tough bark, and about the first of these above his head Nohea slipped the rope. He pulled himself up by it, and, clasping the tree with his legs, seized a higher holding-place. Thus he proceeded with ease until he had reached a point half-way of the lofty column. There he halted, and, taking from his shoulders his matted band, he plastered it firmly around the trunk.
He then slipped to the ground. I was as puzzled as a boy who was told at sailing that the ship was weighing its anchor, and saw no scale.