Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/68

62 then took a dugong harpoon, whilst all the rest sat on her house, aimed it at her, but managed only to transfix her arm with the dart to which the rope was attached. The Dorgai jumped up and ran away to windward, the men holding by the rope just as if she were a dugong. The Dorgai sank into the ground and made water—the spot is to this day a water-hole or well—but soon emerged and ran away again. The Dorgai sank a second time, more deeply, in soft ground. “What we do now?” said the puzzled men; “Dorgai go a long way.” They took a turn of the rope round a tree and pulled; they tugged so vigorously, in fact, that the arm of the Dorgai was wrenched off. Shouting in triumph, the men returned to the beach, flung the arm into the sea, and the tide being low, it projected above the level of the water, and is still to be seen as a rock on the reef named Dorgai Zug. The men then returned home, but the Dorgai died in the ground.

A Dorgai resided on the small island of Karapar, which lies close to the island of Matu, on the south side of Badu.

One day some Badu men on a turtling expedition stopped at Matu to look for gapu (sucker-fish) (1), and caught nine. They slept there that night, and next day all the men sailed to where two rocks (“Mŭgigu” and “Kaigu”) stand up from deep water on the far side of Matu. They lowered the sails, rolled up the mats of which they were formed, fastening them by means of wooden skewers, and deposited them in the basket-like receptacles built on each side of the platform of the canoes. All had good fortune in the turtle-fishing, the crew of each canoe catching from 10 to 15 turtle. There being a head-wind, they were obliged to paddle back to Matu for the night. On reaching the island they put the best turtle on the beach and cut up the poorer ones for their evening meal.