The effect upon me of all this splendor and grace of water life, as I bent over the surface of the lagoon or walked with lunette among the beds of coral, was, after the oft-repeated periods of bewilderment at the gorgeousness and whimsicality of the universe, a deep rejoicing for its prodigality of design and purpose, and a merry sorrow for those who would inflict dogma and orthodoxy on a practical and heterodox world. I leaned on the side of the canoe or on my spears and laughed at the fools of cities, and at myself, who had been a fool among them for most of my life. Just how this train of reasoning ran I cannot say, but it moved inexorably at the contemplation of the sublime radiancy of the vivarium of the Mataiea lagoon. It always appeared a symbol of the cosmic energy which poured the bounty of rain upon the sea as upon the thirsty earth, and which is beyond good and evil as we reckon them.
When I became myself the hunter for fish, and stood upon the hummocks of coral in water up to my waist or neck, lunette in one hand and spears in another, I saw a different aspect of the garden. I, naked among the coral and the plants, must have looked to them like a frightful demon, white and without scales, a horrible devil-fish, my arms and legs glabrous tentacles, and the lunette and spears adding to my hideousness and foul menace. I know that was the impression I made on the rainbow-fish, for they fled within the caves, and only by peeping in through the glass could I see them to drive the spear into them. These slender spears were a dozen feet of light, tough wood, two of them with single iron points two feet long, and a third fitted with ten fine-pointed darning-needles. For small fish I used the latter, and in thrusting into a school was pretty sure to impale one or two.
I tied the rope of pandanus-leaves about my shoulder, and pulled the canoe along with me as a creel, tossing the fish into it as I took them. The first seven were often of different kinds, and I did not despise the yellow and black eels, the lobsters, the mao, or the oysters and clams.
I would rest my spears in the canoe, and meander slowly and meditatively over the coral terraces, repeating verses:
We wandered where the dreamy palm
Murmured above the sleepy wave;
And through the waters clear and calm
Looked down into the coral cave
Whose echoes never had been stirred
By breath of man or song of bird.
When sky and wind were propitious, and other signs familiar to the Maori indicated that fish were plentiful in the lagoon, the whole village dragged the net. This belonged to the chief, who for his ownership received a percentage of the catch. The net was a hundred and fifty feet long, and was carried out by a dozen canoes or by half a hundred or more men and women, who let it sink to the bottom when up to their necks in water. They then approached the shore with the net in a half-circle, carrying it over the coral heaps, and artfully driving into it all the fish they encountered. In shallow water others waited with little baskets, and, scooping up the fish from the net, emptied them into larger baskets slung from their waists. These fish were not very big, but when larger ones were netted, marksmen with spears waited in the shallows to kill any that leaped from the seine. If the haul was bigger than the needs of the village, the overplus was sent to the market in Papeete, or kept in huge anchored, floating baskets of wicker. These fishermen had been heart and soul in the tahatai oneone, the fish strike, and when we had poor luck, often the best spearsman led the clan in the air taught them by the leader whom they remembered with pride and affection:
Hayrahrooyah! I’m a boom! Hayrahrooyah! Boomagay!
They associated the air and words with the fish, and deep down in their primitive hearts thought it an incantation, such as their tahutahu, the sorcerers of the island, spoke of old.
“Tellee haapao maitai! Kelly was a wise man!” they would lament.
Every one used a fine casting-net when fishing alone along the shores. The net was weighted, and was thrown over schools of small fish so dexterously that hundreds were snared in one fling. The tiniest fish were the size of matches. When cooked with a paste, they were as dainty as whitebait served at Greenwich to a London gourmet, and sung by Shakespere. The nets were plaited of the fibers of the hibiscus, banyan, or pandanus-bark, and when a mighty catch was expected, one of small mesh was laid inside a net of stronger and coarser make, to intercept any large fish that might break through the first line of offense. The weights were stones wrapped in cocoanut-fiber, and the floats were of the buoyant hibiscus-wood. In front of the grounds of the chefferie there hung on the trees a long line of nets drying in the breeze.