Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/58

52 Next day Kusa Kap caught another dugong, which his mother told him to take to his uncles, and at the same time return the coco-nuts for more water. He did so, and his uncles filled up the water-bottles and gave him another upi to take to his mother. The untiring bird then caught another dugong, which he gave to the uncles; he had grown so large that he looked “all along same as island in the sky”.

Next day Bukari asked Kusa Kap to go to Dauan to look after her husband, telling him, “When you see my man you sit down close beside him; he will savvy that kusa as belonging to my muti (ear-pendant); when he savvy you go, fly to canoe, catch hold of rope and mast and mat-sail; he will know you come from me and will follow you.” So Kusa Kap flew off to Dauan, and all happened as Bukari expected. Maiwasa took some of his countrymen in the cause and followed Kusa Kap in his flight. On reaching Banba, Kiisa Kap flew to his mother and sat down beside her; as they neared the beach Maiwasa and his friends wondered who had killed all these dugong—the bones strewed the beach “thick like (drift) wood on beach”.

Directly they landed Bukari ran up to Maiwasa, and catching hold of him, asked what woman was that who had stayed along with him. She then told him all her adventures, including the laying of the egg and the hatching of Kusa Kap, being at the same time careful to explain that “no man make him along of me”. Next morning they put all the dugong into the canoe, and Bukari told Kusa Kap to go to Daudai and remain with her uncles, but added that she herself would go home to Dauan, and Bukari wept at parting from her bird-son.

The canoe then started for Dauan, but first sailed close to Saibai before making that island; on nearing the shore Bukari went aft and took a lump of wood which was in the canoe, then the sails were lowered, and the canoe was run fast on to the beach. Gidzö meanwhile was stopping in Maiwasa’s house, and had no idea that Bukari had been