mother?” She said, “What your name?” “My name Upi.” His mother caught hold of him and cried, and told Upi, “I been look round before, no find you; I could not cry, that my throat he fast.” Upi said that they had come to take her to another house.
They looked at a house in the other village and decided to live there. Upi gave all the mothers among the women whose husbands had been killed to his foster-father, but kept all the girls and young women for himself.
ix.—Sesere, the Dugong Hunter.
Once upon a time a man named Sesere lived by himself at a place called Seserenegegat, in the island of Badu. One day Sesere took his bow and arrow, and went on the reef at low tide to look for fish (1); walking along, he came to that portion of the reef which was opposite to the village of Tul, and there he found a pool containing numerous fish, all of which he shot. The men of Tul, envious of his success, came up to Sesere and demanded why he did not stop in his own place instead of encroaching on their reef (2). Then they took the fish away from him, broke his bow and arrow, flinging the pieces away, and, catching hold of his head, pushed him along. Sesere returned home.
Next morning Sesere again took a bow and arrow and went to the same pool in the Tul reef, and shot plenty fish. Once more the Tul men attacked, robbed, and drove him home. Later in the day he walked on the reef, talking and grumbling to himself; looking about him, he noticed that the grass-like plant which grows on the reef had been bitten so cleanly as if cut with some sharp instrument, and he fell to wondering what fish had eaten the grass, and whether that fish was fit to eat. “I don’t know what name—fish he kaikai?”
That evening Sesere went into the bush and picked a quantity of scented leaves, with some of which he
