Call It Courage: Chapter 4

There was no wood better for canoe building than this. It was tough, durable, yet buoyant in the water.

As it fell, Mafatu leaped free of the branches, as nimbly as a cat.

Somewhere in that quarter lay the Cloud of Islands; the great Tuamotu Archipelago which extends across a thousand miles of ocean and ten degrees of latitude.

At sundown, regularly, the white bird came wheeling and circling, to alight clumsily on the beach almost at Mafatu’s side, while Uri pranced about and greeted his friend after his own fashion.

The days passed in a multitude of tasks that kept Mafatu busy from dawn till dark.

His lean-to grew into a three-sided house with bamboo walls and a thatch of palm leaves.

His heart gave a leap of joy; for there, white-gleaming in the sun, was all that remained of the skeleton of a whale. It might not have meant very much to you or to me; but to Mafatu it meant knives and fishhooks galore, splintered bone for darts and spears, a shoulder blade for an ax. It was a veritable treasure trove.

And thus they returned to the camp site, weary, but filled with elation.

Even the dog seemed to have some understanding of what this discovery meant; or if not, he was at least infected with his master’s high spirits. He leaped about like a sportive puppy, yapping until he was hoarse.

The knife emerged first, since that was the most imperative.

Mafatu had come to recognize him; for every day when the boy went out with his trap, that shark, larger than all the others, was circling around, wary and watchful. The other sharks seemed to treat the hammerhead with deference.

It wasn’t, after all, such a formidable weapon. It was only a knife made by a boy from a whale’s rib.

This morning as they approached the spot where the fish trap was anchored, Mafatu saw the polished dorsal of the hated hammerhead circling slowly in the water. It was
 like a triangle of black basalt, making a little furrow in the water as it passed.

“Aiá, Ma’o!” the boy shouted roughly, trying to bolster up his courage. “I have my knife today, see! Coward who robs traps—catch your own fish!”

The trap splintered into bits, while the fish within escaped only to vanish into the shark’s mouth. Mafatu was filled with impotent rage.

At that second the dog’s shift in weight tipped the raft at a perilous angle. With a helpless yelp, Uri slid off into the water.

Putting his face to the surface, he saw the great shark turn over, fathoms deep.

He had killed the ma’o with his own hand, with naught but a bone knife. He could never have done it for himself. Fear would have robbed his arm of all strength. He had done it for Uri, his dog. And he felt suddenly humble, with gratitude.

When the hull had been hollowed out, it must be smoothed off with the adze and caulked with artu gum.

When the hull had been hollowed out, it must be smoothed off with the adze and caulked with artu gum.

There it was—just a rustle in the undergrowth. Scarcely louder than an insect’s hum.

While the stones were heating, the boy cleaned the pig at the water’s edge, then stuffed its empty belly with succulent ti leaves and red bananas.

Rich juices ran in little rivulets down its sides.

The outrigger leaned at a sharp angle and sped ahead toward the distant reef. Spray flew back from the prow and Mafatu’s heart beat high.

The high peak, purple in the waning light, stood somber against the sky. The valleys were shadowed with mystery.

All these weeks he had lived close to this island and been grateful for its bounty.

He saw a scarlet rock-cod materialize, hang in the shadow of the canoe, motionless save for the slight movement of its gills. With a sudden flip of the tail it vanished.

He saw shoals of tiny mullet, miniature arrowheads—the whole school scarcely larger than a child’s hand.

Far below, perhaps forty feet, the sandy floor of the lagoon was clear and green in the dappled light.

The knife fell into the water.
With dismay the boy watched it descend.

The sunlight filtered from above in long, oblique bands.

Mafatu saw a purplish globe of body, eyes baleful and fixed as fate; a parrot-mouth, cruel and beaked, that worked and wabbled.

Then darkness clouded the water as the octopus siphoned out his venom.

When he reached the canoe he had hardly enough strength to cling to the gunwale.

Uri, beside himself, dashed from one end of the canoe to the other, crying piteously.

He raised his spear and plunged it again and again into the body of his foe, shouting aloud a savage paean of triumph. A thousand years of warrior-heritage sounded in his cry.

The boy decided that he would cut off the tentacles; they would dry and shrink, but they would be still of prodigious size, and the people of Hikueru would say: “See, Mafatu killed the feké single-handed. Aué te aué!”

A sand shark, phosphorescent ghost, darted after the pala—seized it in a swirl of luminous mist.

He prepared a poi of bananas and sealed it, likewise, into containers; there it would ferment and sour and become delicious to the taste.

It rose above the thunder of the reef, solemn and majestic, filling the night with thunder.