A story-teller, like a poet or a pugilist, must be _born_, and not _made_, and I begin to fancy I have not been born under a story-telling planet, for by no effort that I can make can I hold on to the thread of my story, and I am conscious the whole affair is fast becoming one great parenthesis. If I could only get clear of this _tapu_ I would "try back." I believe I ought to be just now completing the purchase of my estate. I am sure I have been keeping house a long time before it is built, which is I believe clear against the rules; so I must get rid of this talk about the _tapu_ the best way I can, after which I will start fair and try not to get before my story. Besides these different forms of the _tapu_ which I have mentioned, there were endless others; but the temporary local _tapus_ were the most tormenting to a pakeha: as well they might, seeing that even a native could not steer clear of them always. A place not _tapu_ yesterday might be most horribly _tapu_ to-day, and the consequences of trespassing thereon proportionately troublesome. Thus, sailing along a coast or a river bank, the most inviting landing-place would be almost to a certainty the freehold property of the Taniwha, a terrific sea monster, who would to a certainty, if his landed property was trespassed on, upset the canoe of the trespassers and devour them all the very next time they put to sea. The place was _tapu_, and let the weather be as bad as it might, it was better to keep to sea at all risks than to land there. Even pakeha, though in some cases invulnerable, could not escape the fangs of the terrible Taniwha. "Was not little Jackey-_poto_, the sailor, drowned by the Taniwha? He _would_ go on shore, in spite of every warning, to get some water to mix with his _waipiro_; and was not his canoe found next day floating about with his paddle and two empty case-bottles in it?--a sure sign that the Taniwha had lifted him out bodily. And was not the body of the said Jackey found some days after with the Taniwha's mark on it,--one eye taken out?" These Taniwha would, however, sometimes attach themselves to a chief or warrior, and in the shape of a huge sea monster, a bird, or a fish, gambol round his canoe, and by their motions give presage of good or evil fortune.