Evening star., 1924-06-01
Swimmer Is Penned Under Coral Reef in South Sea
Traveller Dives Too Enegecay in Effort to Avoid Craft

shelving inwardly. realized that ]
had gone farther from my only goal
| Of life. / felt the and was close, but
| still, in desperation, moved my limbs
vigorously.
| THEN I felt the water lashing
about me. Something seized my
arm. Shark stories leaped from my
| memory's cold storage to my very
soul My blood was an icy stream
from head to toes.
Singular to relate, / was aware of a
profound regret for my murders Of
many sharks-who. after all, rea-
soned with an atavistic impulse of
propitiation, were but working out
the wise plan of the Creator.
But the animal that grasped my arm
did not bite. 1t held me firmly. and
dragged me out from that murky hell,
until in a few seconds the light, God 8
eldest and loveliest daughter, appear
ed family, and then. bright as light
ning, and all Of a sudden, / was in the
center of the sun, my mouth open at
| last, my chest heaving, my heart
pumping madly, and my head burst
Ing with pain. / was in the arms of
Piri a Tuahine, who, as all the other
Tahitians, had swum under the reef
in search of me.
In the two or three minutes-or
that half hour-during which ] had
been breathless the sailors had re-
captured the boat and were righting
it, the oars still fastened to the gun
wales. I was glad to be hauled into
the empty boat, along with McHenry.
who was sputtering and cursing.
"Gorbli.meT he said. as he spat
out salt water. you made bloody
fool O. yerself doin' that! Why
didn't ye look how handled meself?
But lost a half-pound OF tobacco by
that chr1stenin'."
was laid down on the cargoless
seats. and the men rowed through the
moat, smiling at me with a worthy
sense Of superiority, while McHenry
dug the soaked tobacco out of his
trousers pocket.
"Ye can always trust the kanaka to
| get ye out O. the water IL ye capsize,' .
| said he, artfully. We've taught him
| to think o. the white man first. He
| blamed we'll knows where he'd get off,
otherwise"
A hundred feet farther we came to
a spit Of rocks, which stopped prog
ress. A swarm of naked children
! were playing about it. Assisted by
| the Tahitians I was lifted to my feet.
| and with McHenry, continued to the
| sand.
| There I took stock of my physical
self. ] was battered and bruised. but
no bones were broken. My shins
were scraped and my entire body
bleeding as If a sharp steel comb had
raked me. My head was bloody, but
my skull without hole in it. or even
marked depression, except my usual
| one where phrenologists locate the
| bump of reverence. I was sick at my
| stomach, and my legs bent under me.
/ knew that I would be as we'll as
| ever soon, unless poisoned, but would
| bear the marks of the coral. All these
| white men who journeyed about the
Paumotus bore indelible scars Of
coral wound.
X X
MY head was bleeding and aching.
A'A and my body quivering with the
| biting pain Of its abraded surface.
Walking along the beach I narrow
ly escaped a more serious accident
| than the disaster of the reef, for only
| the warning of my companion, a
| friendly native, stayed me from
treading upon a nohu, the deadliest
underfoot danger Of the Paumotus.
| It was a fish peculiarly hateful to hu-