Kotharian Lightning

From Nicobarese Folklore

Once upon a time, in the olden days, there were some very wicked people who used to live between Tamalu and Pooko, at a place which does not exist now, but was then called Tarulo. Those people were barbarous savages and used to bewitch folk.

So the other people rose up against them, and slew a number of them; and the remnant fled to our side of the island to a place then named Chuokvok, which is not far from Titop; and there they built houses for themselves. These savages thought nothing of killing a person; they would often kill a stranger on sight.

Now it happened that two children were going to el-panam, and the elder was carrying his young brother on his shoulders. They did not notice that there was a man coming up behind them with a sharp spear in his hand.

That man hurried up stealthily and stabbed the little fellow in the rump; whereupon he cried out: “Oh! I am hurt.”

So the elder brother said to the stranger: “Please do not tease the little man and make him wriggle about, for he will be falling down.” He did not know that his brother had been stabbed behind. He thought the man was merely tickling the child; but he had stabbed him.

Again the man stabbed the child, this time under the armpit; and the blood gushed out, and the child fell down dead.

Then, at last, the elder brother realized that the child had been stabbed; and he ran off as fast as he could, leaving the dead child, for he was afraid of those people; and he told his parents what had happened.

So the people held a council, and decided to slaughter all those savages. They attacked them, and most of them were killed; but some swam out into the deep sea and were turned into a very voracious kind of shark. So these sharks will always eat human beings, if they can get at them, in the sea.

Source:

In the Nicobar Islands, George Whitehead, 1924