Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/182

160 village, there was Qat to their astonishment sitting by the side of his wife. On another occasion they cut half through the bough of a fruit-tree, and persuaded Qat to go out for the nuts. When he fell as the branch broke, and as they thought was killed, Marawa again saved him; and when they ran to seize his wife, they found him lying with his head upon her lap. Qat was himself always ready to play tricks on his brothers, but not in malice. One moonlight night he induced them to go and shoot flying foxes, and as they were going covered himself with boards, and flew up into a pandanus-tree and hung there like a bat. His brothers saw him, shot at him, and hit him. He spat out blood upon the ground, and they, making sure that he was wounded, mounted one after another into the tree to take the bat. As each one shot and climbed after him he flew off, and returned to hang again. When all had shot and climbed up he flew home, took out the arrows which had stuck into his covering of boards, and hung them up in the gamal. When his brothers returned he asked them what sport they had; and when they told how they had shot and hit a wonderful bat, he made them look at the arrows and judge whose they were. Iro Lei took her part in these tricks. One day when Qat and his brothers were sailing in their canoes they saw a woman on a point of rock, who called each of them as he came near to come and have some of her food. Each as he drew near and saw that she was an old woman rejected her offer; but Qat came up and took her into his canoe. They had rejected his much-coveted wife, for this was Ro Lei in disguise.

Again they consulted how they might destroy him, and determined to entrap him while snaring birds. They prepared each one for himself his place in a nutmeg-tree, each in succession further and further from the village, and the tree for Qat much further away than all. Then they took Qat out and shewed him his place. Qat mounted into his tree, and as soon as he was busy with his snares his brother nearest to him descended from his own place, ran beneath the tree where Qat was sitting, and said, 'My nutmeg, swell!' The