After his display of skill and daring—­and, as I thought, vivid imagination—­Red Chicken became my special friend and guide, and on one occasion it was our being together, perhaps, saved his life, and afforded me one of the most thrilling moments of my own.

He and I had gone in a canoe after nightfall to spear fish outside the Bay of Virgins.  Night fishing has its attractions in these tropics, if only for the freedom from severe heat, the glory of the moonlight or starlight, and the waking dreams that come to one upon the sea, when the canoe rests tranquil, the torch blazes, and the fish swim to meet the harpoon.  The night was moonless, but the sea was covered with phosphorescence, sometimes a glittering expanse of light, and again black as velvet except where our canoe moved gently through a soft and glamorous surface of sparkling jewels.  A night for a lover, a lady, and a lute.

Our torch of cocoanut-husks and reeds, seven feet high, was fixed at the prow, so that it could be lifted up when needed to attract the fish or better to light the canoe.  Red Chicken, in a scarlet pareu fastened tightly about his loins, stood at the prow when we had reached his favorite spot off a point of land, while I, with a paddle, noiselessly kept the canoe as stationary as possible.

Light is a lure for many creatures of land and sea and sky.  The moth and the bat whirl about a flame; the sea-bird dashes its body against the bright glass of the lonely tower; wild deer come to see what has disturbed the dark of the forest, and fish of different kinds leap at a torch.  Red Chicken put a match to ours when we were all in readiness.  The brilliant gleam cleft the darkness and sent across the blackness of the water a beam that was a challenge to the curiosity of the dozing fish.  They hastened toward us, and Red Chicken made meat of those who came within the radius of his harpoon, so that within an hour or two our canoe was heaped with half a dozen kinds.

Far off in the path of the flambeau rays I saw the swordfish leaping as they pursued small fish or gamboled for sheer joy in the luminous air.  They seemed to be in pairs.  I watched them lazily, with academic interest in their movements, until suddenly one rose a hundred feet away, and in his idle caper in the air I saw a bulk so immense and a sword of such amazing size that the thought of danger struck me dumb.

He was twenty-five feet in length, and had a dorsal fin that stood up like the sail of a small boat.  But even these dimensions cannot convey the feeling of alarm his presence gave me.  His next leap brought him within forty feet of us.  I recalled a score of accidents I had seen, read, and heard of; fishermen stabbed, boats rent, steel-clad ships pierced through and through.

Red Chicken held the torch to observe him better, and shouted: 

“Apau! Look out!  Paddle fast away!”

I needed no urging.  I dug into the glowing water madly, and the sound of my paddle on the side of the canoe might have been heard half a mile away.  It served no purpose.  Suddenly half a dozen of the swordfish began jumping about us, as if stirred to anger by our torch.  I called to Red Chicken to extinguish, it.