one side that white Mary. He no stop. My word, he go out other side
that fella Mary. She finish. Me no fright. Plenty kanaka too much no
fright."

Old Oti's pride had been touched, for he suddenly stripped down his
lava-lava and showed me the unmistakable scar of a bullet. Before I
could speak, his line ran out suddenly. He checked it and attempted to
haul in, but found that the fish had run around a coral branch.
Casting a look of reproach at me for having beguiled him from his
watchfulness, he went over the side, feet first, turning over after he
got under and following his line down to bottom. The water was ten
fathoms. I leaned over and watched the play of his feet, growing dim
and dimmer, as they stirred the wan phosphorescence into ghostly
fires. Ten fathoms--sixty feet--it was nothing to him, an old man,
compared with the value of a hook and line. After what seemed five
minutes, though it could not have been more than a minute, I saw him
flaming whitely upward. He broke surface and dropped a ten pound rock
cod into the canoe, the line and hook intact, the latter still fast in
the fish's mouth.

"It may be," I said remorselessly. "You no fright long ago. You plenty
fright now along that fella trader."

"Yes, plenty fright," he confessed, with an air of dismissing the
subject. For half an hour we pulled up our lines and flung them out in
silence. Then small fish-sharks began to bite, and after losing a hook
apiece, we hauled in and waited for the sharks to go their way.

"I speak you true," Oti broke into speech, "then you savve we fright
now."