Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/77

Rh skulls of his parents. After he had cut up the dugong with his bamboo knife (upi) he cooked some of it in an earth-oven (amai) (6), and some he boiled in a large conch-shell (bu, Fusus), using a small clam-skull (akul), as a spoon.

Next day Sesere reconstructed the neĕt in another place, further out from the shore than before. The Tul men saw him and wondered what it was. At sundown Sesere mounted the neĕt, taking some dugong meat to eat while waiting. At high water a dugong came; Sesere harpooned it and dragged it on to the beach; he returned to the neĕt, ate some more food, stood up, and soon killed another dugong. Then he thought he had enough food, as a male and pregnant female had succumbed to his harpoon. He cooked some meat on the beach and slept. At daybreak he smoked a large number of pieces of meat over his fire and hung them on a tree to dry. His neighbours, wanting to know what Sesere was doing, came up and said, “Hulloa! he got plenty food,” and Sesere gave them some meat, but only that of inferior quality, saying, “I give you all my food”; to which they remarked, “Why, he gammon, he got plenty left.”

The following night Sesere captured three dugong, and was so busy cutting up their carcasses and cooking the meat that he had no time for sleep. In the morning the Tul men made a wooden framework in the form of a dog, large enough for a man to get inside. They covered it over with the cloth-like sheath or spathe (iwai) which covers the base of the leaves of the coco-palm, and inserted into this natural cloth the brown fibres of the husk of an old coco-nut, so as to imitate hair. As a test of the efficacy of the disguise, the man inside the dog ran on all-fours along a sand-pit, and the sea-birds flew away screaming.

The dog was next despatched to pry about Sesere’s house, so as to discover where he kept his meat. When Sesere saw the dog running towards him he called out to it and said, “That’s my dog now,” and he threw it a piece of meat, which the man inside ate, The dog then