, mango-
and purau-trees which bordered the banks and climbed the hills into
the distance. The puraus often seemed like banians, stretching far over
the water in strange and ghostlike shapes, with twisting branches and
gnarled trunks that in the obscurity gave a startling suggestion of
the fetish growths of the ancients. I felt a faint touch of fear as
I groped through the stream, now and again falling into a deep hole
or stumbling over a stone or buried branch, and I looked often to
reassure myself that Raiere's gigantic figure loomed in the farther
gloom. There was no danger save in me; the scene was peaceful, but for
our own disturbance of the night and the river, and not even a breeze
fluttered the dark leaves of the trees. The mountain rose steeply at
our backs, and constellations appeared to rest upon its shadowy crest.

At last we came to a place where a tiny natural dam caused the stream
to break in glints of white on a crooked line of rocks, and pausing
there, Raiere suddenly bent over. He called peremptorily to Tahitua
to bring him the big lance, which the little boy carried along with
the bag.

"Puhi! Haere mai!" he said in a low, but urgent, voice.

Tahitua flew through the ripples, and we all hurried to see the
new adventure.

"Puhi! Puhi!" again said Raiere, and pointed to the rocks. We
cautiously stepped that way, and saw, apparently asleep at the foot of
the stones, a tangle of huge eels. Their black and gray slate-colored
bodies lay inert in folds, as if they had gathered for a night's
good slumber, and not until Raiere, with unerring aim thrust the
great spear, with its half-dozen points of iron, into one of them,
did the others scatter in a mad swim for safety. The mere transfixing
of the eel did not always mean his securing, but another of us must
put a lance in the contorting curves and with quick and dexterous
motion lift him to the bank where his struggles might be ended with
knife or rock. The release of him for a second might permit him to
wriggle to the river and escape.

With the finding of the first eel, began an hour's search for his
fellows. We had struck their haunt, but they did not yield us half
a dozen of their kind without diligent, though pleasant, work. We
splashed to places when one sang out that an eel was in sight, and
pursued them in their divagations through the river, trusting to
drive them into eddies or under the fringe of plants hanging from
the banks where we hunted