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.

Before a feast, if there were not conditions auspicious for a tuu i te upea toro, a dragging of the seine, the village was occupied during the day or the wind was unfavorable, we went out at night after the trades had died down, and in a dozen or twenty canoes we speared them by torchlight.  One was at the paddle, and the other at the prow, with uplifted flambeau, searching the waters for the fleeing shadows beneath, and launching the dart at the exact instant of proximity.  The congregation of lights, the lapping of the waves, and perhaps the very gathering of humans excited the fish.  They leaped and splashed, and unaware of their betrayal of their presence to slayers, informed our eyes and ears of their whereabouts.  I could not compete with the Tahitians with the spears, and held a paddle, and that slight occupation gave me time and thought for the scene.  The torches threw a lurid glare upon the exaggerated, semi-nude figures of the giant bronzes on the beaks of the pirogues, their arms raised in the poise of the weapon, each outlined against the darkness of the night, glorious avatars yet of their race that had been so mighty and was so soon to pass from the wave.