On The Makaloa Mat

Published in 1919, On the Makaloa Mat is a an anthology of seven short stories linked by their Hawaiian location. The collection includes two of his best stories, Shin Bones and The Water Baby, the latter a piece of island mythology told to a first person narrator while the fish they are trying to catch refuse to bite. The eponymous character, as one with the sea and the fish, is charged with securing lobster for the King, but to do so he must get past the forty sharks that have swum past the reef. How this is achieved is at once fanciful and at the same time rather majestic.