The tonu halted, four or five fathoms down, and lay with gently moving fins. It was then I saw, to my unutterable horror, that Teura's feet and the calves of his legs hung from the creature's twitching jaws. Another spectator was close at hand. "Aué!" cried old Maruia bitterly, in a choking voice. "Teura is gone! But I shall kill that devil as he has killed my boy!" She had been baptized--she was a churchgoer and a keeper of the Sabbath day; but now I heard her half chanting a strange invocation, in loud and solemn tones. "She prays to the heathen gods," muttered Marama in an awed whisper, "to Taiao, and to Ruahatu, the old shark-god of her people!" I glanced up. The woman was standing in the stern of her canoe. She wore her usual diving-dress, a loose gown of cotton over a pareu worn as the men wore theirs. The goggles were on her eyes and she had taken up a heavy fish-spear from its place on the outrigger-poles of the canoe. It was a formidable weapon, a haft of tough black wood tipped with a yard of steel: a tapering lance sharpened to a needle-point. I turned my head to look into the water glass. The great fish lay beneath us, a monstrous vision in the blue twilight below; but now the man's legs had disappeared. Maruia's canoe came alongside. I heard the outrigger knock softly against our own. Then both canoes rocked violently, and we started at the sound of a heavy plunging splash. Without a word to us or an instant's hesitation, Maruia had leaped overboard. One hand held a leaden diving-weight and the other gripped the spear, point downward. The fish scarcely moved at the turmoil in the water; the hideous lord of the lagoon was making his meal. Our hearts beat fast as we watched what followed, gazing through our little pane of glass. Swift and straight, the woman went down head-first till she was within two yards of the tonu's back. She let go the weight, which plunged down out of sight among the shadows; she drew herself together and struck--struck squarely where the head joined the misshapen body, a foot behind the monstrous goggle eyes. I saw the steel strike deep--saw Maruia raise herself upright in the water to drive the spear home with both hands on the shaft. The fish started; its jaws gaped wide--the sprawled and mangled body of Teura eddied down toward the coral forty feet below. The wounded monster turned on his side, the shaft of the spear protruding from his spiny back, and swam feebly and aimlessly to the surface, where the divers, now gathering from all sides, put a quick end to his struggles. Then I heard the eerie diver's whistle close beside our canoe and the voice of Maruia calling to us. "I am going home," she said. "Lend me a hand to put Teura in the canoe." She had been nearly four minutes under water and had brought up with her the body of her boy.