Faery Lands of the South Seas

by James Norman Hall; Charles Nordhoff

"Tairi told me a lot about pearl fishing. The people had divided their lagoon into three sections, one of which was fished each year. In this way each section got a two years' rest. The shell is the object of the diving—pearls are a secondary issue. The divers are not much afraid of sharks, but dread the tonu and the big conger eel. Some years before, when Tari was resting in a boat after a spell under water, one of his companions failed to return to the surface. Looking through his water glass, he saw a great tonu lying on the bottom, sixty feet beneath him—the legs of his comrade hanging from its jaws. Fancy the ugly brute, ten feet long and all head, like an overgrown rock cod, with a man in his mouth. Tairi and several others seized their spears and were over the side next moment; they killed the tonu, but too late to save the life of their companion.

"Conger eels grow to enormous size in the pearl lagoons, and the divers keep a close watch for them. They lie in holes and crevices of the coral and dart out their heads to seize a passing fish, or the wrist of a diver stooping and intent on his task. When the conger's jaws close on wrist or ankle, the diver needs a cool head; no amount of struggling will pull the eel from his hole. One must wait quietly, Tairi told me, until the conger relaxes his jaws preparatory to taking a better grip. Then a quick wrench, and one is free.

"On an atoll like Mataora, where the food supply is limited to fish and coconuts, with a chicken or a piece of pork as an occasional treat, fishing plays a large part in the life of the people. The men were all expert fishermen, and used a variety of ingenious methods to catch the different kinds of fish. Tairi, of course, was no longer able to go out; but a friend of his—an old fellow named Tamatoa—used to take me with him. He was a fine specimen—six feet tall, muscular and active as a boy, with clear eyes and thick gray hair. One day he proposed trying for koperu, a small variety of mackerel.

"The settlement is on the lee side of the island, where a coral shoal runs out half a mile to sea, covered with twenty to forty fathoms of water. It was early in the morning—a dead calm—when we launched the big canoe and slipped out through the surf. About a quarter of a mile offshore Tamatoa asked me to hold the canoe stationary while he went about his fishing. Fastening a twenty-foot rope to the thwart, he made a noose at the other end and passed it under his arms. Then he took a ripe coconut, split it, and gouged out the meat with his knife. With the white pulp in one hand, he slipped overboard and swam down as far as the rope would let him. Through my water glass I watched him put pieces of coconut into his mouth and blow out clouds of the finely chewed stuff, which drifted and eddied about him in the gentle current. He seemed to stay under indefinitely—the lungs of a pearl diver are wonderful things! Now and then he came to the surface for a fresh supply of chum, and finally—at first in twos and threes, and then in shoals—the koperu began to appear from the depths. Little by little he enticed them close to the surface, until they swam all about him fearlessly, gobbling the morsels of coconut. At last the old man reached up for his fishing tackle—an eighteen-inch twig, with a bit of doubled sewing cotton and a tiny barbless hook. He baited the hook with a particle of coconut and dangled it under the nose of the nearest koperu. While he hung on the shortened rope, just beneath the surface, his right arm broke water in a series of jerks, and each time it rose a fish tumbled into the canoe until they lay in the bottom by dozens.

"Though the people of Mataora made sport of their work, they had plenty of leisure for other things. In the evening, when the tasks of the day had been completed by lighting the lamps in the roofed-over sleeping places of the dead, the young people loved to gather for a session of akatu talanga—story telling. They met in some one's house or brought mats to spread in the bright moonlight outside; and while the others lay about, intent on the tale, one after another related the adventures of some Polynesian hero or the loves of some legendary island princess—strange fragments from the old days, full of specters and devils and monstrous heathen gods. There was a girl named Porima who told her stories marvelously well—a tall youngster of seventeen, with a dash of off-island blood; Hawaiian, I think. She was an artist in her way; one could imagine in her the pioneer of a literature to come. Her broad forehead, the masses of black hair which from time to time, with an impatient gesture, she shook back over her shoulders, and the slumberous eyes, with a suggestion of hypnotic power, made her a person not easily forgotten. Although she had told them many times, Porima's stories never failed to hold her audience; the whispering ceased when she began, and every head turned toward where she sat, her hands continually in motion, her voice rising in excitement, or dying away to a murmur, while the listeners held their breath. As the hours passed, both audience and performers used to grow weary and drop off to sleep, one by one; finally a rooster crowed and one awoke with a start to realize that it was day.

"One evening, at a story telling, I heard a shout from the beach and remembered that I had been invited to go after flying fish. A dozen canoes were putting out through the surf, each manned by four paddlers. I made a fourth in the last canoe; we shot out of the opening with a receding wave, paddled desperately through the surf, and a moment later were rocking gently beyond the breakers. The canoes were formed into a rough line; each stern-man lit a torch of coconut leaves bound with bark, and a man forward took his place standing—net in hand. The net is like a shallow landing net, set on a haft of stiff bamboo, and can be handled only after years of unconscious training. My position, paddling amidships, enabled me to watch how the net was managed—one doesn't often see such an exhibition of dexterity and strength. The art consists in clapping the net over the fish just at the moment when he is lying at the surface, hesitating before taking flight; at any instant the netter may see a fish to port, to starboard, or directly ahead. Our man swung his net continually, and each time it passed over the canoe he flipped it upside-down to drop a fish. Think of the muscles needed for this sort of thing; the quickness of eye and hand, where a delicate balance must be maintained, and one is constantly alert to guard one's face against the fish, which whizz past at all angles. Then remember that it is a pretty serious matter to capsize in this torch-lit water, swarming with sharks, where it is imprudent even to trail one's hand overboard.

"In the bend of a bow-shaped islet at the north end of the lagoon, under the palms behind a shore of blue water and dazzling sand, lived an old chap named Ruri, who introduced me to another kind of fishing. Ruri was close to seventy, but a strong man still; his only complaint was lack of teeth, which compelled him to live on varuvaru—the grated-up meat of the young coconut, mixed with its own milk. The ambition of his life was a trip to Tahiti to get a set of false teeth. He was not a native of Mataora—his mother was a Gilbert-Islander and his father a Samoan. For many years Ruri had followed the sea—cabin boy under Bully Hayes; deserter (to keep a whole skin) from the famous Leonora; blackbirder in the New Hebrides and Solomon Islands; pearl fisher in Penrhyn and the lagoons of the Paumotu. At last, on a black night of storm, his vessel struck and went to pieces on the coral of Mataora, and Ruri's days of wandering were over. He married a woman of the island, but now she was dead and the old man lived alone, a mile from the settlement, occupied with his simple wants and immersed in dreams of the past. Close beside his house was the grave of his wife—a tomb of cement inclosed in a neat building of octagonal shape, with a door and a small curtained window. A fine lamp, carefully tended and lit every evening at sunset, hung above the grave, and a few stunted gardenias and frangipanis, brought from enormous distances, were planted about the door. Ruri's little plantation of coconuts and coarse taro was free from weeds, and the neatness of his house, shipshape and scrupulously clean, betrayed the old sailor.

"After a spell of calm weather, when the breaching surf had ceased to cloud the waters of the lagoon, and the suspended particles of coral sand had settled to the bottom, Ruri offered to show me how to catch tenu—a fine fish, inhabiting the lagoon in ten to twenty fathoms of water—speckled like a trout on a ground of brown and gold, and reaching a weight of twenty pounds.

"In the absurdly complicated process of obtaining bait, tenu-fishing is typical of the South Pacific. The night before, Ruri had spent two hours with a torch, catching hermit crabs; now, using these crabs for bait we had to catch some ku ta—a small, prickly fish which alone has power to interest the tenu. We set out in Ruri's leaky canoe and paddled to a big, coral mushroom, which rose to within a yard of the surface. Here the old man smashed the shells of his hermit crabs with a stone, broke off the claws, set the soft bodies to one side, and mashed the claws to a paste, which he dropped overboard and allowed to drift into a dark hole in the coral. Then he produced a short line, baited the hook with a body of a crab, and let it sink out of sight into the darkness of the hole. In ten minutes a dozen ku ta were gasping in the bottom of the canoe—fantastic little fish, colored scarlet and vermilion, with enormous black eyes and a dorsal fin which seemed to be carved out of red sealing wax. We put them in a basket, trailed overboard to keep them alive, and began the real fishing of the day. I paddled slowly, while Ruri—who did not believe in fishing till the fish was in sight—leaned over the side, scrutinizing the bottom through his water glass. Finally he signaled me to stop—his eye had caught the movement of a tenu among the masses of live coral, forty feet below us. The rest was simple: one hooked a ku ta under the dorsal fin, tossed him overboard, and allowed the weight of the hook and line to carry him to the bottom. By means of the water glass, one could watch the approach of the tenu, see him seize the bait, and judge the proper moment to strike.

"The bonito, which they call atu, is the most important of all fish to the people of Mataora. Almost any fine day one could see a fleet of canoes working offshore, busy at bonito catching, surrounded by a cloud of the sea birds which guide one to the schools. They use a pretty lure for this fishing—a sort of jig cut out of mother-of-pearl, equipped with a tuft of red-dyed coconut husk and a barbless hook of shell. Each fisherman carries a stiff bamboo rod and half a dozen of these lures—ranging in color from pale green to black—attached to ten-foot lengths of line. The islanders have discovered that the condition of the water and the variations of light make certain colors more attractive than others at a given time; and when a school is found they try one shade after another till they discover which the bonito prefer. Then the jigs not in use are hooked to a ring at the base of the pole, and the fisherman begins to pull bonito from the water, heaving them out by main strength, without a moment's play. The barbless hook releases itself the moment the fish is in the canoe, and the lure goes overboard without the loss of an instant.