"I wish now that I had brought a few more men," he went on, "but I think we can make out by shutting down the copra-making and putting everyone at work. I am going to put Fatu and Ofai to diving, with a couple of stern-men from the village; they say we can find trees to build two or three more canoes. The others will have to work at cleaning shell, and from now on I'm counting on you and Marama to feed us. Tins are all right in an emergency, but it would be absurd to make ourselves ill on canned stuff in a place swarming with excellent fish. There are eight of us on board, counting the new cook, and I want you to supply us with fish. You can begin to-morrow—I'll give you the small canoe and whatever gear you need."
VII
SOUTH SEA FISHERMEN
I have always loved fishing since I was old enough to hold a rod and cast out into the surf at home, and now, as I look back on the months spent with my uncle in the South Seas, I know that my happiest memories of Iriatai are of the long hours in a canoe with Marama in the lagoon or on the open sea beyond the reef. It was fishing in unspoiled waters—fishing to dream about in after years. Our primitive tackle, much of which was fashioned by our own hands, did not detract from the charm of the sport, and the background—the land, the sea, the sky—was hauntingly and strangely beautiful.
Some of those nights were unforgettable—calm nights when we lay off the reef from sunset till dawn began to brighten in the east. In all that solitude our lantern was the only light, the only sign of man. Iriatai lay like a shadow on the sea, stretching off vaguely to the south, and the heavens above us were powdered with stars of a brilliance I had never known before. The native boy was a better astronomer than I; he had names for many of the constellations, and strange old stories to tell of them. Castor and Pollux, the Twins, sinking on the horizon to the west, he called Pipiri-Ma—a boy and a girl, he told me, who had lived in very ancient times and who, because of their unkind parents, had fled away to the skies. The Southern Cross was Tatauro; the Scorpion was a great fishhook, flung into the sky after a god had used it to pull up the islands of the Paumotus; the Pleiades, visible in the east an hour before the dawn, he called Matarii—the Little Eyes, and told me a pretty story of their origin.
Much of our fishing was done at night, when we fished offshore for the great bottom-feeders of the South Pacific: the deep-water albicore, the castor-oil fish, and the manga—a long black creature shaped like an enormous pickerel, with goggle-eyes and rows of formidable teeth.
Our custom was to start an hour before sunset and paddle north to a break between the two long islands, where we dragged our canoe through the ankle-deep wash of the barrier, waited our moment, and slipped out through the surf. The outer face of the reef shelved off steeply, and our line, which reached the bottom at two hundred fathoms, would have reached the reef as well. Marama usually took the stern, paddling gently, while I did the fishing forward. Our bait was fish, saved from the previous day's catch and salted. I chose a morsel large as a man's fist and tied it with strong thread to the point of one of the great wooden hooks used in this deep-sea fishing: a fork of ironwood, six inches from tip to tip, and barbed with a cod-hook lashed on to point down and inward. It was useless, I learned, to fish with an ordinary hook for these dwellers on the bottom. Their habit of swimming down vertically, to seize the bait from above, made necessary the use of our barbaric implement. When my hook was baited, I fastened a large pebble to the line, with a special hitch that Marama had taught me. Coil after coil ran out as the pebble sank, until at last I felt the slackening which told me that it had touched bottom. Hauling up a yard or two, I gave the jerk which freed my coral sinker, and settled myself to wait. Sometimes an hour passed without a strike, and then, when I was least prepared for it, some monster of a hundred pounds seized my hook with a rush that carried my arm elbow-deep into the black water alongside. Hand over hand I brought him slowly to the surface till he lay wallowing beside the canoe, eyes bulging with the release from the pressure of his deep-sea haunts. A blow with the blunt side of our whale-spade ended his struggles, and taking hold by the gills, we tilted the canoe and slid the quivering body inboard.
Sometimes, as my fish neared the surface, I felt a sudden slackening of the line—one of the small sharks that prowled along the reef at night had helped himself, leaving only a bodiless and gaping head upon the hook. Once or twice, when the marauder rose close to our canoe, Marama sprang to his feet in a rage—keen-bladed spade in hand—and ended the shark's life with a cutting blow forward of the eyes. At those times we seized our paddles and made off swiftly for new fishing-grounds; for the scene of the ensuing feast was no place for our light canoe.
Fishing by night meant sleeping through the warm hours of the day. Sometimes, when we wearied of this, the order was reversed and we went out at daybreak to pursue the schools of bonito far offshore. The lures for bonito are made of mother-of-pearl, and the fisherman must carry six or seven different shades to suit the varying conditions of sea and sky. Marama selected half a dozen large pearl-shells, shading from light to dark, and marked with a pencil on the thickest part of each the outline of a small fish. When this was done we took our shell to the shop my uncle had set up ashore, and set to work with vise and hacksaw to cut out the lures. Then came the grinding and polishing, and finally a barbless hook of brass was attached to each, the line made fast to the forward end, and a tuft of coconut fibre bound on across the rear. We tied the lines to a stiff pole of bamboo, ten or twelve feet long and equipped with a ring at the butt end, in which to hook the lures when not in use.
Bonito-fishing was hard work and not unspiced with danger,—the risk of being swamped or blown offshore in a squall,—but it had a fascination of its own. We used to paddle half a mile out to sea and wait in the morning calm, on the lookout for birds. At sunrise the boobies and noddy terns left their roosting-places by hundreds and cruised about over the sea, singly or in little bands, in search of breakfast. We watched them flying this way and that until at last, perhaps a mile away, a dozen noddies began to circle and dive. Then it was time to seize our paddles and strain our backs to make for the birds at top speed. Keener eyes than ours had been on the watch, and before a minute had passed hungry sea-birds were flapping from all directions toward the school of fish. The small fish, pursued by both bonito and birds, were far from remaining stationary; sometimes they sounded and disappeared altogether; sometimes, when our backs were aching with an hour's chase, they swept off to windward at a pace that made us lay down our paddles in despair. There were days when we went home worn out and empty-handed, but there were other days when luck was with us and we drove the canoe into the midst of ravenous schools. Then, while the man forward paddled with all his might, the stern-man faced about, long rod in hand and lure skittering over the waves behind us. A hasty trial proved which shade of mother-of-pearl was most attractive, and next moment fish after fish came tumbling aboard—fat, steel-blue, and vibrant. There were days when we hooked and landed thirty fish in half as many minutes, before we sank down exhausted to rest, leaving the birds to circle off above the foaming sea.