The people, singing in the big MONIEP or town-house, stopped their
monotonous droning, and the name of Tibakwa, was yelled vociferously
through-out the village in true Gilbert Group style. In the Gilberts,
if a native in one corner of a house speaks to another in the opposite,
he bawls loud enough to be heard a mile off.


* * * * *


Tibakwa (The Shark) was a short, squat fellow, with his broad back and
chest scored and seamed with an intricate and inartistic network of
cicatrices made by sharks' teeth swords. His hair, straight, coarse,
and jet-black, was cut away square from just above his eyebrows to the
top of his ears, leaving his fierce countenance in a sort of frame.
Each ear-lobe bore a load--one had two or three sticks of tobacco,
twined in and about the distended circle of flesh, and the other a
clasp-knife and wooden pipe. Stripped to the waist he showed his
muscular outlines to perfection, and he sat down unasked in the bold,
self-confident, half-defiant manner natural to the Line Islander.


* * * * *


"Where's Tirau?" asked the trader.

"Here," said the man of wounds, pointing outside, and he called out in
a voice like the bellow of a bull--"TIRAU O, NAKO MAI! (Come here!)"