y companion as we walked
down the left-hand bank of the river. "There must be a _ta~nifa_
cruising about, or else those Manono fellows wouldn't have been so
scared at us wanting to cross."

As soon as we reached the young chief's quarters, we were made very
welcome, and were obliged to accept his invitation to remain and share
supper with himself and his men--all stalwart young natives from the
little island of Manono--a lovely spot situated in the straits
separating Upolo from Savaii. Placing our guns and bags in the care of
one of the warriors, we took our seats on the matted floor, filled our
pipes anew, and, whilst a bowl of kava was being prepared, Li'o, the
young chief told us about the advent of the _ta~nifa_.

Let me first of all, however, explain that the _ta~nifa_ is a somewhat
rare and greatly-dreaded member of the old-established shark family. By
many white residents in Samoa it was believed to occasionally reach a
length of from twenty to twenty-five feet; as a matter of fact it seldom
exceeds ten feet, but its great girth, and its solitary, nocturnal habit
of haunting the mouths of shallow streams has invested it even to the
native mind with fictional powers of voracity and destruction. Yet,
despite the exaggerated accounts of the creature, it is really a
dreadful monster, rendered the more dangerous to human life by the
persistency with which it frequents muddied and shallow water,
particularly after a freshet caused by heavy rain, when its presence
cannot be discerned.

Into the port of Apia there fall two small streams--called "rivers" by
the local people--the Mulivai and the Vaisigago, and I was fortunate to
see specimens of the _ta~nifa_ on three occasions, twice at the
Vaisigago, and once at the mouth of the Mulivai, but I had never seen
one caught, or even sufficiently exposed to give me an idea of its
proportions. Many natives, however--particularly an old Rarotongan named
Hapai, who lived in Apia, and was the proud capturer of several
_ta~nifa_--gave me a reliable description, which I afterwards
verified.

A _ta~nifa_ ten feet long, they assured me, was an enormously bulky and
powerful creature with jaws and teeth much larger than an ocean-haunting
shark of double that length; the width across the shoulders was very
great, and although it generally swam slowly, it would, when it had once
sighted its prey, dart along under the water with great rapidity without
causing a ripple. At a village in