第32章 THE HEATHEN(8)

I abandoned the canoe and started to swim toward the schooner, expecting to be picked up by the boat before I got there.One of the niggers elected to come with me, and we swam along silently, side by side, now and again putting our faces into the water and peering about for sharks.The screams of the man who stayed by the canoe informed us that he was taken.I was peering into the water when I saw a big shark pass directly beneath me.He was fully sixteen feet in length.I saw the whole thing.He got the woolly-head by the middle, and away he went, the poor devil, head, shoulders, and arms out of the water all the time, screeching in a heart-rending way.He was carried along in this fashion for several hundred feet, when he was dragged beneath the surface.

I swam doggedly on, hoping that that was the last unattached shark.But there was another.Whether it was one that had attacked the natives earlier, or whether it was one that had made a good meal elsewhere, I do not know.At any rate, he was not in such haste as the others.I could not swim so rapidly now, for a large part of my effort was devoted to keeping track of him.I was watching him when he made his first attack.By good luck I got both hands on his nose, and, though his momentum nearly shoved me under, I managed to keep him off.He veered clear, and began circling about again.A second time I escaped him by the same manoeuvre.The third rush was a miss on both sides.He sheered at the moment my hands should have landed on his nose, but his sandpaper hide (I had on a sleeveless undershirt) scraped the skin off one arm from elbow to shoulder.

By this time I was played out, and gave up hope.The schooner was still two hundred feet away.My face was in the water, and I was watching him manoeuvre for another attempt, when I saw a brown body pass between us.It was Otoo.

"Swim for the schooner, master!" he said.And he spoke gayly, as though the affair was a mere lark."I know sharks.The shark is my brother."I obeyed, swimming slowly on, while Otoo swam about me, keeping always between me and the shark, foiling his rushes and encouraging me.

"The davit tackle carried away, and they are rigging the falls," heexplained, a minute or so later, and then went under to head off another attack.

By the time the schooner was thirty feet away I was about done for.I could scarcely move.They were heaving lines at us from on board, but they continually fell short.The shark, finding that it was receiving no hurt, had become bolder.Several times it nearly got me, but each time Otoo was there just the moment before it was too late.Of course, Otoo could have saved himself any time.But he stuck by me.

"Good-by, Charley! I'm finished!" I just managed to gasp.

I knew that the end had come, and that the next moment I should throw up my hands and go down.

But Otoo laughed in my face, saying:

"I will show you a new trick.I will make that shark feel sick!"He dropped in behind me, where the shark was preparing to come atme.

"A little more to the left!" he next called out."There is a line there onthe water.To the left, master--to the left!"I changed my course and struck out blindly.I was by that time barely conscious.As my hand closed on the line I heard an exclamation from on board.I turned and looked.There was no sign of Otoo.The next instant he broke surface.Both hands were off at the wrist, the stumps spouting blood.

"Otoo!" he called softly.And I could see in his gaze the love that thrilled in his voice.

Then, and then only, at the very last of all our years, he called me by that name.

"Good-by, Otoo!" he called.

Then he was dragged under, and I was hauled aboard, where I fainted in the captain's arms.

And so passed Otoo, who saved me and made me a man, and who saved me in the end.We met in the maw of a hurricane, and parted in the maw of a shark, with seventeen intervening years of comradeship, the like of which I dare to assert has never befallen two men, the one brown and the other white.If Jehovah be from His high place watching every sparrowfall, not least in His kingdom shall be Otoo, the one heathen of Bora Bora.