Page:The Melanesians Studies in their Anthropology and Folklore.djvu/430

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into it and turned into a fish. And when he wanted to eat a man he entered into that fish and went to Opa or Raga. One day he went into his garden, and his son was in the village, and his father had forbidden the boy to go to the inner part of the house; but his father had gone away and he and his mother were in the village, and he was playing about alone, and he thought he would go and see what it was that his father had forbidden him to see. So he went into the further end of the house, and saw the image of the fish lying, and got into it. And a kingfisher flies down as a sign if any one gets into the figure of the fish; and the old woman lying in the house when she hears the kingfisher breaks a stick, and the image then goes into the sea. And when the boy got into the figure of the fish, and the king-fisher flew down to the roof of the house, and the old woman heard it, she broke a piece of fire-wood, and the image of the fish with the boy inside it went down into the sea, and crossed to Opa. And the father was in his garden and he heard a noise, and he ran as fast as he could, but found that the fish was already gone. So he weaves together the stuff that is on a cocoa-nut, in no particular shape, and puts it on his breast, and goes into the sea to seek the boy. And he finds him at Opa; and the Opa people, they say, had very nearly shot him. And his father brought him home. And as they were coming back they saw a man in a bread-fruit-tree, and the father said to his son, Go and eat him; and the son said to his father, How shall I go, father, because he is on dry land? And his father hit him hard, and said, Go, for you want to eat a man. Then he went, and as he went up towards the shore the sea went up too upon the shore, and he was carried up into the bread-fruit-tree after that man and swallowed him. And they came back to the back part of the house, and put him there, for he was not yet dead. And when they put him there at the further end of the house, and he moved himself about, he saw the sea, and the shark, and the fishes with their mouths open to devour him. And so he stayed there and died.