Page:The brown fairy book.djvu/225

 ‘I shall dive for it, and break it off the rock,’ said Kabo, ‘and then you must help me to drag it up into the canoe.’

There the shell-fish lay and gaped, but Kabo, though he dived in, kept well out of the way of the beast.

Up he came, puffing and blowing: ‘Oh, Pivi,’ he cried, ‘I cannot move it. Jump in and try yourself!’

Pivi dived, with his spear, and the shell-fish opened its shell wider yet, and sucked, and Pivi disappeared into its mouth, and the shell shut up with a snap!

Kabo laughed like a fiend, and then went home.

‘Where is Pivi?’ asked the two pretty girls. Kabo pretended to cry, and told how Pivi had been swallowed.

‘But dry your tears, my darlings,’ said Kabo, ‘I will be your husband, and my wives shall be your slaves. Everything is for the best, in the best of all possible worlds.’

‘No, no!’ cried the girls, ‘we love Pivi. We do not love anyone else. We shall stay at home, and weep for Pivi!’

‘Wretched idiots!’ cried Kabo; ‘Pivi was a scoundrel who broke my leg, and knocked me into the river.’

Then a little cough was heard at the door, and Kabo trembled, for he knew it was the cough of Pivi!

‘Ah, dear Pivi!’ cried Kabo, rushing to the door. ‘What joy! I was trying to console your dear wives.’

Pivi said not one word. He waved his hand, and five and twenty of his friends came trooping down the hill. They cut up Kabo into little pieces. Pivi turned round, and there was the good woman of the river.

‘Pivi,’ she said, ‘how did you get out of the living tomb into which Kabo sent you?’

‘I had my spear with me,’ said Pivi. ‘It was quite dry inside the shell, and I worked away at the fish with my spear, till he saw reason to open his shell, and out I came.’ Then the good woman laughed; and Pivi and his two wives lived happy ever afterwards.

[Moncelon. Bulletin de la Societé d’Anthropologie. Series iii. vol. ix., pp. 613-365.]