82 FISHES OF FANCY. 



But then Kae was a magician. Moreover, the whale was 

 a tame one. It belonged to the god Tinirau, who, when 

 visitors dropped in upon him, would occasionally hand 

 round bits of his pet whale, as our forefathers used to 

 hand round comfits, or, as everywhere in the East, the tray 

 still circulates among callers with the complimentary car- 

 damum or clove. And one day Kae whistled the whale 

 away from its master, and ate it up in the seclusion of 

 his own parlour. But Tinirau guessed where his pet had 

 gone, and told his wife, and she, with some of her lady 

 friends, went and kidnapped the magician, and brought 

 him back in bonds to Tinirau, who very properly put him 

 to death, and gave him " to the sharks and whales " to eat. 



In another direction, the shapes of fishes, the Polynesians 

 have a lively mythological imagination. Why some fish 

 are flat is thus explained : Ina, the daughter of Vaitooringa 

 and Ngaetna, attempted to flee to the Sacred Isle. She 

 had asked one fish after another to bear her thither, but 

 they were unable to sustain such a burden, and upset her 

 in shallow water. She at last tried the sole, and was suc- 

 cessfully borne to the edge of the breakers. Here again 

 she was unshipped, and the heavenly maid (tantaene 

 animis !) was so provoked that she stamped on the head 

 of the unfortunate fish, and with such energy that the 

 underneath eye was squeezed through to the upper side ! 

 " Hence the sole is now obliged to swim flat, with one side 

 of its face having no eye." But the day's work was by no 

 means over, for Ina now summoned the shark, and suc- 

 ceeded in reaching the Sacred Island. Feeling thirsty 

 during the voyage, Ina cracked a cocoa-nut on the shark's 

 forehead, and this accounts for the bump now found on 

 the forehead of all sharks, and called Ina's bump. 



Now, though all this is as old as the hills, and older 



