That evening, when the day's work was over and the people lay on mats before their houses, smoking and gossiping in the brief twilight, we went ashore. My uncle led the way to where old Maruia lived with one of her nephews: Teura, a pleasant and amusing boy, who paddled her canoe to the diving-grounds and opened the shell that she brought up. Her house was surrounded by a fence of stakes, inside which a pair of pigs wandered, rooting up the earth. As we opened the gate, I heard her voice give the hospitable shout of "_Haere mai_!--Come in!" "I have come to talk with you about Tehare, my nephew," said Uncle Harry, when a mat had been spread and we had taken our places on it, native-fashion. "He and Marama have become so clever at the sea fishing that we are glutted with fish and time hangs heavy on their hands. To-day they have asked me if they might go out and dive for shell with you others; they are strong boys and well grown--it is in my mind to let them go. What think you of the plan? Is Iriatai a lagoon overdangerous for boys?" The old woman shook her head as she replied. "There is little danger here," she said. "Ten fathoms would not hurt a child, and the great shark you killed was the only evil shark in the lagoon. And he was not a shark, as I and all the others know! For the rest, we have seen neither _tonu_ nor conger eel in all the days we have been diving, though it is well to watch closely, for a tonu is an ill thing to meet! But let them go--they will come to no harm; perhaps they will find a pearl like mine, and in any case the white boy will have strange tales to tell when he returns to his own land. I myself will show them where there is shell in seven fathoms of water--not so much as where we dive, but a good place to begin. Let them beware of the clefts and crevices where an eel might lurk, and avoid the dark caverns in the coral, for it is in such places that the tonu lies in wait. There seems little to fear in Iriatai, but one is never sure. As for pearls, watch always for the great lone oysters crusted with coral and misshapen with old age--_parau tahito_, we call them, and every diver knows that they contain the finest pearls." When the divers went out next morning Marama and I went with them, our canoe equipped like the others with basket and weight and line. Maruia, smoking a cigarette in the bow of her canoe while Teura paddled, showed us the way to a patch of shell she had found in shallow water, a quarter of a mile east of where the others were diving. "Drop your anchor here," she said, bending over the gunwale to examine the bottom. "The depth is seven fathoms and there is enough shell to keep you busy, though not so much nor of such great size as in the deeper water where we work. Now I must leave--stay here, you two!"