“Ay, Roka, feke is a good bait for the pura and all those great fish which live deep down in their fale amu” (houses of coral). “Let us seek for one on the outer reef. Then we shall return here. It is in my heart to show these our good friends of Pikirami that there is one white man who can catch a pura.”
Roka showed his white teeth in an approving smile. “Thou art a clever white man, and can do all those things that we brown men can do. Malua hath told me that there is no one like thee in all the world for skill in fishing and many things. Let us go seek feke.”
The rest of their party—the men from the Motutapu and the Pikirami people—were busily employed in preparations for cooking, some making ready an oven of red-hot stones, others putting up fish and chickens in leaf wrappers, and Malua and two Pikirami youths of his own age were husking numbers of young drinking-nuts.
Telling his native friends that he would return in an hour or two, or as soon as he had caught some feke. Harvey set off, accompanied by Roka and Huka, the latter carrying a heavy turtle-spear, about five feet in length from the tip of its wide arrow-headed point to the end of the pole of ironwood.
Turning to the eastward, they struck into the cool shade of the narrow strip of forest which clothed the island from the inner lagoon beach to the outer or weather side, and Harvey at once began to search among the small pools on the reef for an octopus, Huka with Roka going on ahead with his turtle-spear. In the course of a quarter of an hour they were out of sight of each other.
For some time Harvey, armed with a light wooden fish-spear, carefully examined the shallow pools as he walked along over the reef, and after he had progressed about a mile he at last saw one of the hideous creatures he sought lying on the white sandy bottom of a circular hole in the reef, its green malevolent eyes looking upward at the intruder. In an instant he thrust the spear through its horrible marbled head, and drew it out upon the rocks, where he proceeded to kill it, a task which took him longer than he anticipated; then carrying it back to the shore, he threw the still quivering monster upon a prominent rock and set out again in search of another, intending to follow his native comrades, who were in hopes of striking a turtle.
As he tramped over the reef, crushing the living, many-coloured coral under his booted feet, his eyes were arrested by some objects lying on the bottom of a deep pool. He bent down and looked carefully—five magnificent orange cowries were clinging closely together upon a large white and sea-worn slab of dead coral.
An exclamation ot pleasure escaped from him as he saw the great size and rich colouring of these rare and beautiful shells.
“What a lovely present for Tessa!” he thought; and taking off his shirt he dived into the clear water and brought them up one by one. Then with almost boyish delight he placed them beside him on the reef, and looked at them admiringly.
“Oh you beauties!” he said, passing his hand over their glossy backs; “how delighted Tessa will be! No one else has ever had the luck to find five such shells together. I'm a tagata manuia lava,{*} as Malua says.”