He had seized it to obey when I heard a splash and the canoe received a terrific shock.  A tremendous bulk fell upon it.  With a sudden swing I was hurled into the air and fell twenty feet away.  In the water I heard a swish, and glimpsed the giant espadon as he leaped again.

I was unhurt, but feared for Red Chicken.  He had cried out as the canoe went under, but I found him by the outrigger, trying to right the craft.  Together we succeeded, and when I had ousted some of the water, Red Chicken crawled in.

“Papaoufaa! I am wounded slightly,” he said, as I assisted him.  “The Spear of the Sea has thrust me through.”

The torch was lost, but I felt a big hole in the calf of his right leg.  Blood was pouring from the wound.  I made a tourniquet of a strip of my pareu and, with a small harpoon, twisted it until the flow of blood was stopped.  Then, guided by him, I paddled as fast as I could to the beach, on which there was little trouble in landing as the bay was smooth.

Red Chicken did not utter a complaint from the moment of his first outcry, and when I roused others and he was carried to his house, he took the pipe handed him and smoked quietly.

“The Aavehie was against him,” said an old man.  Aavehie is the god of fishermen, who was always propitiated by intending anglers in the polytheistic days, and who still had power.

[Illustration:  Spearing fish in Marquesas Islands]

[Illustration:  Pearl shell divers at work]

There was no white doctor on the island, nor had there been one for many years.  There was nothing to do but call the tatihi, or native doctor, an aged and shriveled man whose whole body was an intricate pattern of tattooing and wrinkles.  He came at once, and with his claw-like hands cleverly drew together the edges of Red Chicken’s wound and gummed them in place with the juice of the ape, a bulbous plant like the edible taro.  Red Chicken must have suffered keenly, for the ape juice is exceedingly caustic, but he made no protest, continuing to puff the pipe.  Over the wound the tatihi applied a leaf, and bound the whole very carefully with a bandage of tapa cloth folded in surgical fashion.

About the mat on which Red Chicken lay the elders of the village congregated in the morning to discuss the accident and tell tales while the pipe circulated.  One had seen his friend pierced through the chest by a sword-fish and instantly killed.  Numerous incidents of their canoes being sunk by these savage Spears of the Sea were recited by the wise men who, with no books to bother them or written records to dull their memories, preserved the most minute recollections of important events of the past.