Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/62

56 breaking stones. Men who, hiding from the tempest, had secreted themselves in crevices of the rock, were sucked out by the wind and waterspouts. Thus perished Kwoia and all the inhabitants of Mabuiag. The mari of the newly deceased were conducted to Kibuka by the original mari; they were all porpoises.

Once upon a time a Badu man named Mutuk was fishing in the sea off a rock, when his line fouled and he dived into the water to free it; a passing shark swallowed him (“swilled him down”) without hurting him.

The shark swam on northwards, and on passing over the reef of Mangrove I. Mutuk felt warm, and said to himself, “Now we are in shallow water.” When the shark plunged into deeper water Mutuk felt cold and knew they had descended again; later on the shark swam to Boigu and was left stranded on the reef by the receding tide. Mutuk felt the heat of the sun beating upon the body of the fish and knew that he was high and dry, so taking a sharp shell (id or idö) which he carried behind his ear (1), he hacked away at the belly of the shark until he had sufficiently ripped it open; on emerging from his strange prison he found all his hair had fallen off.

Mutuk found his way to a water-hole on the island and climbed a tree which overhung it. By-and-bye a woman came to draw water, and it happened that she was no other than Mutuk’s sister, Mĕtalăp, who had married Piti, the chief of Boigu. Looking into the well whilst getting water, she saw in it the reflection of two faces; one was her own face, but whose was the other? She pondered, she moved her head, and the reflection of it simultaneously shifted also, but the other one did not move, so she proved it was