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THE DANCING FISH.
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discover its whereabouts, so, at last, he woke his son and enquired if he knew where it was. Koro told him, and then craftily pretended to sleep, but really lay with half-closed eyes watching his father’s movements. The old man went outside and passing a bark climbing-loop over his feet began to ascend a coco-nut palm, but Koro noticed that the mode of climbing was peculiar, as Tini was careful that his body did not touch the tree, and that his right hand only was used. Arrived at the top of the tree Tini threw down several ripe coco-nuts and then descended. He then grated finely some of the kernels of the nuts and carried the pulp, wrapped in a broad leaf of a species of gigantic taro, down to the sea-beach. Koro cautiously followed his father to the strand and there saw the scraped coco-nut scattered on the water while a long incantation was chanted by the “Lord of all Fish.” The youth strained every power of his memory to fix the potent syllables in his mind that he might use them on some future occasion. To his delight he saw the inhabitants of the sea rise and hurry to the feet of their King; first came the little fish from the shallows, and then from farther away, from abysses of ocean, appeared the monsters of the great depths. These all came up on the sands in the moonlight, and changing