“Almost my hand was upon her, when the largest shark I have ever seen rose beside her.  You know it is at night that these devils look for their prey.  Anna saw the mako at the same moment, and made a great splashing.  I heard her call out the name of Bernadette the Blessed.

“The men with me turned about, but I kept on.  I cried to the boat to hurry to us.  I could see the mako turn in the water, as he must do to take anything into his mouth.  I kicked him and I struck him, and I cursed him by the name of Manu-Aiata, the shark god.  If I had had a knife I could have killed him easily.

“But, Menike, I could do nothing.  He did not want me.  The boat came, but not in time.  I saw the devil take her in his jaws as the wild boar takes a bird that is helpless, and I felt him descend into the depths of the sea.  I could do nothing.”

A cat’s-paw stole across the sea from the southeast, the boat rolled hard, and Tetuahunahuna sprang erect.

“A toi te ka! Make sail!” he said.

They raised the slender mast, a rose-wood tree, roughly shaped in the forest, and fastened it to either thwart with three ropes.  Through a ring at its head was passed the lift, and the sail of mats, old and worn, was set, men and women all fastening the strings to the boom.  Two sheets were used, one cleated about five feet from the rudder, the other at the disposition of the steersman, who let out the boom according to the wind.

The breeze sprang up and died, and sprang up again.  At last the deathly calm, the sickening heat, were over, and we sped across the freshening waves.

Mast and sail out of the way, we stretched ourselves in the boat with more comfort, enjoying the cooling current of air.  Tetuahunahuna, the sheet in his hand, squatted again on his narrow perch.

“You returned to that ship when the boat picked you up?” I asked.

“Aue!” he replied.  “The captain was crazed with anger.  He cursed me, and said that the girl has swum ashore.”

“‘No, the shark has taken Anna,’ I said.  ’She will look for her white father no more.’

“The captain had a glass of rum at his mouth, but he put it down.  He would have me tell him again her name.  When I did so, he shook as if with cold, and he swallowed the rum quickly.

“‘Where was she born?’ he said next.

“’At Hapaa.  Her mother is O Take Oho, whose father was eaten by the men of Tai-o-hae,’ I said, and looking at his face I saw that his eyes were the color of the mio, the rosewood when freshly cut.

“The captain went to his cabin, and soon he leaped up the stairs, falling over the thing they look at to steer the ship, and there, lying on the deck, he cried again and again that I had done wrong not to tell him earlier.

“He held in his hand the tiki, the silver box that Anna had always worn about her neck, that her father had given her.