“Here! Drink!”
The calabash was full, and Grief drank sweet fresh water which had come up from the depths of the salt.
“It flows out from the land,” said Mauriri.
“On the bottom?”
“No. The bottom is as far below as the mountains are above. Fifty feet down it flows. Swim down until you feel its coolness.”
Several times filling and emptying his lungs in diver fashion, Grief turned over and went down through the water. Salt it was to his lips, and warm to his flesh; but at last, deep down, it perceptibly chilled and tasted brackish. Then, suddenly, his body entered the cold, subterranean stream. He removed the small stopper from the calabash, and, as the sweet water gurgled into it, he saw the phosphorescent glimmer of a big fish, like a sea ghost, drift sluggishly by.
Thereafter, holding the growing weight of the calabashes, he remained on the surface, while Mauriri took them down, one by one, and filled them.
“There are sharks,” Grief said, as they swam back to shore.
“Pooh!” was the answer. “They are fish sharks. We of Fuatino are brothers to the fish sharks.”
“But the tiger sharks? I have seen them here.”