166 POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
who were now collected on the raft, was so great 
as to sink it so far below the surface, that they 
sometimes stood above their knees in water. They 
made very little progress, and soon became ex- 
hausted by fatigue and hunger. In this condition 
they were attacked by a number of sharks. Desti- 
tute of a knife, or any other weapon of defence, 
they fell an easy prey to these rapacious monsters. 
One after another was seized and devoured, or 
carried away by them; and the survivors, who 
with dreadful anguish beheld their companions thus 
destroyed, saw the number of assailants apparently 
increasing, as each body was carried away, until 
only two or three remained. The raft, thus light- 
ened of its load, rose to the surface of the water, 
and placed them beyond the reach of the voracious 
jaws of their relentless destroyers. The voyage on 
which they had set out, was only from one of the 
Society Islands to another, consequently they 
were not very far from land. The tide and the 
current now carried them to the shore, where 
they landed, to tell the melancholy fate of their 
fellow-voyagers. 
But for the sharks, the South Sea Islanders 
would be in comparatively little danger from ca- 
sualties in their voyages among the islands; and 
although when armed they have sometimes been 
known to attack a shark in the water, yet when 
destitute of a knife or other weapon, they become 
an easy prey, and are consequently much terrified 
at such merciless antagonists. 
Another circumstance also, that added to this 
dread of sharks was, the superstitious ideas they 
entertained relative to some of the species. 
Although they would not only kill, but eat cer- 
tain kinds of shark: the large blue sharks, squalus 
