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