yack in the Atolls. 
69 
Paul Jonathan) had just given out the first 
hymn, when there was a sudden commotion 
among his squatting congregation. A native, 
his bronzed skin streaming with perspiration 
and his frame panting with excitement, had 
put his head and shoulders through one of 
the low, wide windows of the sacred edifice 
(from the outside, of course), and the Reverend 
Paul, in severe but dignified tones, called him 
an unmannerly pig, and then asked him what 
he wanted. 
“The sharks are coming in , your reverence ! ” 
In an instant the deep religious calm of 
the congregation was broken up, and half a 
minute later the church was cleared in a mad 
rush to get to the beach, launch the canoes, and 
go a-fishing for sharks, the minister following 
as hard as he could run, divesting himself 
of his garment of office by the way. Like 
his Cornish prototype, he meant to have a 
share of the plunder. (I wonder whether the 
Cornish story originated from the Polynesian 
story, or vice versa. Both are true.) 
But shark-catching means money down there 
in the Carolines and the equatorial atolls of the 
North and South Pacific; and sometimes vast 
