Jumping up and tumbling over each other in our eagerness we rushed out; but alas! too late for the shark; for instead of approaching in its usual leisurely manner, it made a straight dart at the bait, and before we could free our end of the line it was as taut as an iron bar, and the creature, with the hook firmly fastened in his jaw, was ploughing the water into foam, amid yells of excitement from the natives.  Then suddenly the line fell slack, and the half-a-dozen men who were holding it went over on their backs, heels up.

In mournful silence we hauled it in, and then, oh woe! the hook, our prized, our beautiful hook, was gone! and with it two feet of the chain, which had parted at the centre swivel.  That particular ta~nifa was seen no more.

Nearly two months later, two ta~nifa of a much larger size, appeared at the mouth of the Vaivasa.  Several of the white residents tried, night after night, to hook them, but the monsters refused to look at the baits.  Then appeared on the scene an old one-eyed Malay named ’Reo, who asserted he could kill them easily.  The way in which he set to work was described to me by the natives who witnessed the operations.  Taking a piece of green bamboo, about four feet in length, he split from it two strips each an inch wide.  The ends of these he then, after charring the points, sharpened carefully; then by great pressure he coiled them up into as small a compass as possible, keeping the whole in position by sewing the coil up in the fresh skin of a fish known as the isuumu moana—­a species of the “leather-jacket.”  Then he asked to be provided with two dogs.  A couple of curs were soon provided, killed, and the viscera removed.  The coils of bamboo were then placed in the vacancy and the skin of the bellies stitched up with small wooden skewers.  That completed the preparation of the baits.

As soon as the two sharks made their appearance, one of the dead dogs was thrown into the water.  It was quickly swallowed.  Then the second followed, and was also seized by the other ta~nifa.  The creatures cruised about for some hours, then went off, as the tide began to fall.

On the following evening they did not turn up, nor on the next; but the Malay insisted that within four or five days both would be dead.  As soon as the dogs were digested, he said, the thin fish-skin would follow, the bamboo coil would fly apart, and the sharpened ends penetrate not only the sharks’ intestines, but protrude through the outer skin as well.

Quite a week afterwards, during which time neither of the ta~nifa had been seen alive, the smaller of the two was found dead on the beach at Vailele Plantation, about four miles from the Vaivasa.  It was examined by numbers of people, and presented an extremely interesting sight; one end of the bamboo spring was protruding over a foot from the belly, which was so cut and lacerated by the agonised efforts of the monster to free itself from the instrument of torture, that much of the intestines was gone.