, and several wore elastic
sleeve-holders as ornaments on tawny arms and legs, while one, the
son of Ugh! sported earrings, great hoops of gold that flashed in
the sunshine. With their dark skins, gleaming eyes, and white teeth,
they were a brilliant picture against the dazzling blue of the sea.
Straight across the channel we steered for Hana Hevane, a little bay
and valley guarded by sunken coral rocks over which the water foamed
in white warning. Two of the men leaped out into the waves and hunted
on these rocks for squids, while we beached the boat on a shore
uninhabited by any living creature but rats, lizards, and centipedes.
Several small octopi were soon brought in, and one of the men placed
them on some boulders where the tide had left pools of water, and
cleaned them of their poison. He rubbed them on the stone exactly as
a washerwoman handles a flannel garment, and out of them came a
lather as though he had soaped them. Suds, bubbles, and froth--one
would have said a laundress had been at work there. He dipped them
often in a pool of salt water, and not until they would yield no
more suds did he give each a final rinsing and throw it on the fire
made on the beach. Suddenly a shout broke my absorption in this task.
The son of Ugh! with the gold earrings, waving his arms from amidst
the surf on the reef, called to me to come and see a big _feke_. As
his companions were dancing about and yelling madly, I left the
laundrying of the small sea-devils and splashed two hundred yards
through the lagoon to the scene of excitement. Four of the crew had
attacked a giant devil-fish, which was hidden in a cave in the rocks.
From the gloom it darted out its long arms and tried to seize the
strange creatures that menaced it. The naked boatsmen, dancing just
out of reach of the writhing tentacles, struck at them with long
knives. As they cut off pieces of the curling, groping gristle, I
thought I heard a horrible groan from the cave, almost like the
voice of a human in agony. I stayed six feet away, for I had no
knife and no relish for the game.

Four of the long arms had been severed at the ends when suddenly the
octopus came out of his den to fight for his life. He was a
reddish-purple globe of horrid flesh, horned all over, with a head
not unlike an elephant's, but with large, demoniacal eyes, bitter,
hating eyes that roved from one to another of us as if selecting his
prey. Eight arms, some shorn of their suckers, stretch