The defects of the position on the Big Rock were vital. There was
neither food nor water. For several nights, accompanied by one of the
Raiatea men, Mauriri swam to the head of the bay for supplies. Then came
the night when lights flared on the water and shots were fired. After
that the water-side of the Big Rock was invested as well.
“It's a funny situation,” Brown remarked, who was getting all the
adventure he had been led to believe resided in the South Seas. “We've
got hold and can't let go, and Raoul has hold and can't let go. He can't
get away, and we're liable to starve to death holding him.”
“If the rain came, the rock-basins would fill,” said Mauriri. It was
their first twenty-four hours without water. “Big Brother, to-night you
and I will get water. It is the work of strong men.”
That night, with cocoanut calabashes, each of quart capacity and tightly
stoppered, he led Grief down to the water from the peninsula side of the
Big Rock. They swam out not more than a hundred feet. Beyond, they could
hear the occasional click of an oar or the knock of a paddle against
a canoe, and sometimes they saw the flare of matches as the men in the
guarding boats lighted cigarettes or pipes.
“Wait here,” whispered Mauriri, “and hold the calabashes.”
Turning over, he swam down. Grief, face downward, watched his
phosphorescent track glimmer, and dim, and vanish. A long minute
afterward Mauriri broke surface noiselessly at Grief's side.
“Here! Drink!”
The calabash was full, and Grief drank sweet fresh water which had come
up from the depths of the salt.
“It flows out from the land,” said Mauriri.
“On the bottom?”
“No. The bottom is as far below as the mountains are above. Fifty feet
down it flows. Swim down until you feel its coolness.”
Several times filling and emptying his lungs in diver fashion, Grief
turned over and went down through the water. Salt it was to his lips,
and warm to his flesh; but at last, deep down, it perceptibly chilled
and tasted brackish. Then, suddenly, his body entered the cold,
subterranean stream. He removed the small stopper from the calabash,
and, as the sweet water gurgled into it, he saw the phosphorescent
glimmer of a big fish, like a sea ghost, drift sluggishly by.
Thereafter, holding the growing weight of the calabashes, he remained on
the surface, while Mauriri took them down, one by one, and filled them.
“There are sharks,” Grief said, as they swam back to shore.
“Pooh!” was the answer. “They are fish sharks. We of Fuatino are
brothers to the fish sharks.”
“But the tiger sharks? I have seen them here.”
“When they come, Big Brother, we will have no more water to
drink--unless it rains.”