From Nicobarese Folklore
Once upon a time, long, long ago, the people of Chowra came to this island with a canoe for sale, which was purchased by the people of Nok-tol-tui. In exchange for the boat, the people of Chowra got a great quantity of goods – spoons, silver wire, axes and dahs (machetes). But they cheated the people of Chowra by shaping pieces of wood to look like dahs, and then daubing them over with soot.
The Chowra people did not in the least perceive how they were being deceived; and they took their things and went home. There, at last, they discovered how they had been befooled; perhaps it was through accidentally finding out how very light the dahs were.
Now the people of Chowra are wondrous magicians. So they made a ball of pandanus (or bread-fruit) paste, and a small canoe to contain it. Then they sent off this toy canoe with the pandanus paste aboard it; and it went straight to the village of those people who had deceived them; and it was cast up on the beach there.
A person found it and took it away with him, and all the people of the village, every one, ate some of the paste. There was just one little child that did not eat any; perhaps he was asleep when all the others were eating the pandanus. The child was quite small and not old enough to understand things.
Now early next morning a man was going out from an adjoining village to spear fish, and he saw that child playing all alone on the beach. He thought to himself, “That child is the only one to get up early here this morning,” and did not trouble himself any more about the matter.
When he was returning from spearing fish, on his way home, he again saw the child, still playing alone. So he went up into a house, and lit his cigarette; and on looking round saw everyone stretched out stiff and still.
The little child came up the ladder too, and began to suck at his mother’s breast, not knowing that she was dead; but the man who had been fishing realized that all the people were dead.
So he picked up the child and went off with him to his own village, “Ot-ra-hoon” (or Kemnyus), and hunted around for some people to come and help him to bury those who had thus died all together.
It was as when the bolt that has been shot strikes against a tree, and ricochets, and hits the archer who shot it. We are sure to have falling on our own heads the consequences of our actions; if they do not come at once, they will find us out in the future.
Source:
In the Nicobar Islands, George Whitehead, 1924
Kotharian Lightning 