class="x-ebookmaker-pageno" title="[55]"/> quickly submitted to discipline with this reward before them.

He saw that they thought in their crude way, just as dogs and birds thought, and their hearing was like that of other animals. By tapping stones under water he could call them, but he generally used a speaking tube which he thrust into the water. By using rags of different colors, he trained them to distinguish between colors. He taught them to fetch and carry sticks, and then pieces of meat. As they grew older, he trained them to search for fish in the bay, and to bring them in without injuring them as they took them in or cast them out of their pouches. Pork and beans were liberally used as rewards. He was finally successful in teaching them to distinguish between the grades of fish and as it were, take orders for special kinds and leave the rest. The most intelligent learned to travel long distances, even to Maui and Hawaii, and find the feeding grounds of the rare fish of which he kept samples in a pond, and exhibited to them whenever he desired a supply of that variety.

He never permitted the natives to watch him while in his training school. He gave names to the expert and reliable sharks. His reading was limited so that he selected names from the Bible and from the names of the towns near his home. He called them "Lenox belle," "Barrington belle," "Pittsfield belle," "Lee belle," "Bashbish belle," "Stockbridge belle," and many other Berkshire names were used. The Scriptural names were "Queen of Sheba," "Jezabel," "Mehita-bel" and "Assyrian girl," with other such names. The word "belle" appealed to his poetic instinct.

He graduated the sharks after two years of training, and then opened business. He purchased a canoe, and paddled out to sea, followed by more than twenty submissive fish. He sent them off singly or by battalion, as he called it. In the battalion form, they moved out on an extended line and drove the fish desired towards the caves and small inlets, where they were easily caught, taken into the pouches, and brought to Peleg's canoe, and pork and beans were liberally served out in return.

On the arrival of the next whaling fleet, Peleg entered Honolulu harbor every morning with a large load of mullet in his canoe or with other excellent fish. After disposing of them to the whalers, he put out of the harbor at once, and joined his "sea hounds" as he called them, who waited for him outside the reef. His enormous catches attracted the attention of the natives, who once followed him in the hope of finding his rich fishing grounds. They were especially surprised at his large catch during stormy weather, when they could not go out in their canoes. Nor, by watching Hanauma bay could they get any information, as there were no nets there, and the sharks attracted no attention.

On one occasion as he was paddling along the Waikiki shore after selling his load of fish, he met a fleet of native canoes that had no luck. Taking compassion on them, he dipped his tube under water, gave the sign for mullet to his sea dogs, shipped his paddle, and lit his pipe. In an hour the noses of his hunters rubbed against the side of the canoe, and leaning over, he pulled out of their mouths more than six hundred pounds of mullet, and threw them into the canoes of the natives. The natives were stricken with terror at the sight, and dropped their paddles with the exclamation: "He is a kahuna (sorcerer) of the shark god."

He was soon regarded as an akua (god). No natives dared to enter the bay of Hanauma.

At the end of each whaling season he accumulated considerable sums in gold, a part of which he hid and a part he invested in the purchase of shares in whalers. After the season, he engaged in fishing for the rare fish only, which he supplied to the King and chiefs. Whenever the King said: "Peleg, my friend, I want some of the Ahi," Peleg sent four of his leading sharks to the Kona coast, and they returned within ten hours, with an abundance.

The King sent for him one day and said to him: "You are the most valuable man in my kingdom, and as my predecessors rewarded Isaac Davis and John Young with matrimonial alliances, I would be glad to have you look around and if you see any attractive female of the royal connection that you would like to marry, you may take her until otherwise ordered. I wish for useful men about my throne. I put on no airs, excepting a white cotton shirt. If you accept my offer you are authorized to wear an Admiral's cocked hat, and new boots on State occasion." Peleg replied that he recognized the honor, but that his heart belonged to his sharks and to the daughter of a carpenter who lived near the York State line, and he expected to visit her very soon.

A fanatical native attempted to "anaana" him or pray him to death. He gathered grass and burned it. The oily kukui nuts were thrown on the fire, and the whole resources of the Polynesian Black Art were brought into use. But Peleg lived.

A missionary, hearing of his remarkable powers, visited him and inquired about his ancestors, and among other questions asked him if he had become a heathen and allowed himself to become a kahuna or sorcerer. He replied that he did not hanker after heathenism, but, he said, that if he was in the missionary business he would open a conjuring saloon and beat all their old kahunas at sleight of hand tricks, and that would soon bring the whole crowd over to his side. The heathen, he said, couldn't do much thinking but if they saw him pull a rabbit out of his nose, or take a taro out of a man's ear, they would smash the business of their own conjuring priests. Seein' was believin'. Conjuring tricks would finally bust up their superstitions. The missionary said he and his associates could not look upon the matter in that way, but he would write to the American Board about it, and ask it to send out a respectable conjurer of high moral principle who would hitch a moral to the tail end of every trick, and then challenge a native sorcerer to do any better.

Peleg said that although he was a perverted Puritan, he would supply all of the Honolulu missionaries with fish without charge.

As he had received a very limited education owing to his father's flourishing poverty, he seldom wrote any letters. He did not forget his mother, however. She received from time to time, through Bunker & Co., of New Bedford, comfortable sums of money, with the statement that they came from her son, who was somewhere on the equator, and would come home after awhile. He also sent to Patsy McGloural, who had grown up and did the chores in the family of a rich paper manufacturer, a sandal wood box, and a dress of the finest Chinese silk, which he got from one of the vessels in the sandal wood trade. This dress was the finest in Berkshire county, and when Patsy put it on and went to church, it attracted the attention of the women, so that the preacher gave out the hymn about being "naked, poor and sinful."

Peleg had invested his money in shares in the whaleships, which made very profitable voyages, from Honolulu to the Arctic and Japan seas, and he became rich for a Berkshire man. After ten years of fishing he resolved to go home. He found a young man who came from the neighboring town of Hinsdale, on one of the new whalers, and after giving him a long trial, instructed him in the business. He consulted an attorney in Honolulu, and executed an instrument establishing the "Peleg Chapman Shark Trust," the income of which was to be used in feeding his faithful sharks with pork and beans, and in supplying the poor natives of Honolulu with fish.

He then sailed for