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The Ebbing Of The Tide, by Louis Becke
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Title: The Ebbing Of The Tide South Sea Stories - 1896
Author: Louis Becke
Release Date: March 22, 2008 [EBook #24896]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EBBING OF THE TIDE ***
Produced by David Widger
THE EBBING OF THE TIDE
SOUTH SEA STORIES
1896
By Louis Becke
"LULIBAN OF THE POOL"
A boy and a girl sat by the rocky margin of a deep mountain pool in Ponape in the North Pacific. The girl was weaving a basket from the leaves of a cocoa-nut. As she wove she sang the "Song of Luliban," and the boy listened intently.
"'Tis a fine song that thou singest, Niya," said the boy, who came from Metalanien and was a stranger; "and who was Luliban, and Red-Hair the White Man?"
"O Guk!" said Niya, wonderingly, "hast never heard in Metalanien of Luliban, she who dived with one husband and came up with another--in this very pool?"
"What new lie is this thou tellest to the boy because he is a stranger?" said a White Man, who lay resting in the thick grass waiting for the basket to be finished, for the three were going further up the mountain stream to catch crayfish.
"Lie?" said the child; "nay, 'tis no lie. Is not this the Po