wooden box floating low in the water. When she dragged it out on the
beach its contents rattled, and inside she found ten tins of salmon.
She opened one by hammering it on the canoe. When a leak was started,
she drained the tin. After that she spent several hours in extracting
the salmon, hammering and squeezing it out a morsel at a time.

Eight days longer she waited for rescue. In the meantime she fastened
the outrigger back on the canoe, using for lashings all the cocoanut
fibre she could find, and also what remained of her ahu. The canoe was
badly cracked, and she could not make it water-tight; but a calabash
made from a cocoanut she stored on board for a bailer. She was hard
put for a paddle. With a piece of tin she sawed off all her hair close
to the scalp. Out of the hair she braided a cord; and by means of the
cord she lashed a three-foot piece of broom handle to a board from the
salmon case.

She gnawed wedges with her teeth and with them wedged the lashing.

On the eighteenth day, at midnight, she launched the canoe through the
surf and started back for Hikueru. She was an old woman. Hardship had
stripped her fat from her till scarcely more than bones and skin and a
few stringy muscles remained. The canoe was large and should have been
paddled by three strong men.

But she did it alone, with a make-shift paddle. Also, the canoe leaked
badly, and one-third of her time was devoted to bailing. By clear
daylight she looked vainly for Hikueru. Astern, Takokota had sunk
beneath the sea rim. The sun blazed down on her nakedness, compelling
her body to surrender its moisture. Two tins of salmon were left, and
in the course of the day she battered holes in them and drained the