Call it Courage

Call It Courage
by
Armstrong Sperry

It was the sea that Mafatu feared. He had been surrounded by it ever since he was born. The thunder of it filled his ears; the crash of it upon the reef, the mutter of it at sunset, the threat and fury of its storms – on every hand, wherever he turned – the sea.
He could not remember when the fear of it first had taken hold of him. Perhaps it was during the great hurricane which swept Kikueru when he was a child of three. Even now, twelve years later, Mafatu could remember that terrible morning. His mother had taken him out to the barrier reef to search for

sea urchins in the reef pools. There were other canoes scattered at wide intervals along the reef. With late afternoon the other fishermen began to turn back. They shouted warnings to Mafatu’s mother. It was the season of hurricane and the people of Hikueru were nervous and ill at ease, charged, it seemed, with an almost animal awareness of impending storm.
But when at last Mafatu’s mother turned back toward shore, a swift current had set in around the shoulder of the reef passage: a meeting of tides that swept like a millrace out into the open sea. It seized the frail craft in its swift race. Despite all the woman’s skill, the canoe was carried on the crest of the churning tide, through the reef passage, into the outer ocean.

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