Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/188

182 canoe broke all to pieces on Saper reef, which lies south-west of Mer. With the assistance of the gunwale boards he swam to Bĕgegiz, a village at the south-west of Mer. The men of the Dauerle clan, who inhabit that part of the island, seized him and said, "You stop here, we look for food." They made a stone fence round Bĕgegiz, but, as Malu did not get much food, he swam off to Dauar, and landed at the sand-spit, Giar. All the Dauar men who were there caught Malu and put him in a house. They informed him they were going to look for food, and put a rope fence (bĕribei kar) round him.

Malu looked about him, but could find no food, so he swam round to the south side of the island of Dauar, and landed in the bay of Orme. Here also the men seized him, and made a stone fence round him.

The old story was repeated, but this time he recrossed the channel between Dauar and Mer, and landed at Aund, on the south side of the latter island. There was only a single house, inhabited by a man named Dorg, and his wife, Kabur, in this little cove.

Kabur was line-fishing on the reef at Terker, when Malu swam across the channel. As Malu was pushing the gunwale-board of his wrecked canoe before him, and being all but submerged, he escaped the sight of Kabur, who thought it was merely a drifting canoe. Then Malu changed into an octopus (ati), and swam to Kabur, and crawled up her, entwining his arms round her body and neck. He left her with a retreating wave, and then returned; but this time Kabur killed him with the small fish-spear she had, and putting him in her basket, secured the mouth of it with the spear, and deposited the basket in a rock-pool.

Kabur went home and called her husband, and together they went to look at the octopus. She said to him, "This is your zogo" (1). Dorg took the octopus to his house, and hung the basket up which contained it.

At sundown they went to bed, and the wife told her husband all about the catching of it. During the night they