Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/804

782 round him, begging him to return, and, though he could not understand why they were so anxious, he returned.

Three days later, seeing the young fishes again at play, he a second time left the house to go and look at them. Now, since he had taken up his abode in the sea, he had acquired some of the peculiarities of fishes, among others the emission of a phosphorescent light by night; and, coming too near the surface of the water, he was seen by some fishermen in a canoe, who immediately speared him, thinking him to be an unusually fine fish. He cried out for help, and his wife's relations hastened to his assistance. They endeavored to drag him down to the bottom of the sea, but, finding that all their efforts were unavailing, and that the fishermen were still pulling him up, they begged a shark that was swimming by to bite through the fishing line that was fastened to the spear. The shark immediately complied, and the man was once more at liberty. He was taken back to the house, the spear was drawn out of his body, and by means of dressings which were applied the wound soon became healed.

This narrow escape had much frightened his wife's relations, and as soon as the man had recovered they told him that he could not stay there any longer, lest some other accident should befall him through his imprudence. Therefore they sent him back to the land with his wife, giving him as a parting gift the spear, which they specially charged him to keep carefully concealed.

When they returned to the shore the two went back to their former abode, and the man carefully hid the spear in the thatch of the roof. The house in which they lived formed one side of a central court, and other families lived in the houses on the three other sides. In one of these houses was the owner of the whole, and some years after the return of the husband and wife from the sea he determined to put new thatch on all the houses.

After he had got the grass all ready for rethatching, he began taking the thatch off the house in which the man and his fish wife lived, and had hardly taken off three armfuls before he discovered the spear, which the man had forgotten all about. Directly the house-owner saw the spear, he knew it by the marks on it, and said, "This is mine." He said that he had lost it one night when out fishing; that he had speared a large fish with it, which had broken the line and escaped. "How did you get it?" he asked the husband.

The husband pretended not to hear, but the house-owner repeated the question. Then the husband said he did not know the spear was there, but the house-owner said he did not believe him. He called him a thief, and said he would bring a palaver before the chief, because he had stolen the spear. Then the man was obliged to tell all to clear himself, and the house-owner was