was more than a day's journey from the beach. So one of their number tarried with the canoe, while the others climbed the hill.
In a little while a child came down to the beach near where the canoe lay, to fill his coconut water bottle with salt water that his mother might salt their food in cooking it. To him spake the man, saying, "Knowest thou in whose house I may find shell money?"
"Yea, lord," answered the child. "Truly my father hath much shell money, and would fain have some of thy betel nuts."
Whereupon the man left the canoe and followed the child to his father's house, where he received much shell money, and where he bestowed many betel nuts. Then he coiled the strings of money in a water bottle, and went down to the canoe, where he awaited his companions.
They were not long in coming, and glad were their voices as they spake of the long strings of money they had received. And all set out for their home. But on the way they were disputing whose string was the longest, and desired to land that they might know whose was the best.
It was a desolate shore on which they landed. A pandanus grew near, and one by one the men hung their strings of money over its branches and watched as they hung near the ground. "Thine is red, brother," . . . "Thine is long," so said they. And now it was the turn of the man who had stayed
