The inhabitants of the last-named cluster of islands are, as I have said, the most skilled fishermen of all the Malayo-Polynesian peoples with whom it has been my fortune to have come in contact.  The very poverty of their island homes—­mere sandbanks covered with coconut and pandanus palms only—­drives them to the sea for their food; for the Ellice Islanders, unlike their more fortunate prototypes who dwell in the forest-clad, mountainous, and fertile islands of Samoa, Tahiti, Raratonga, &c., live almost exclusively upon coconuts, the drupes of the pandanus palm, and fish.  From their very infancy they look to the sea as the main source of their food-supply, either in the clear waters of the lagoon, among the breaking surf on the reef, or out in the blue depths of the ocean beyond.  From morn till night the frail canoes of these semi-nude, brown-skinned, and fearless toilers of the sea may be seen by the voyager paddling swiftly over the rolling swell of the wide Pacific in chase of the bonito, or lying motionless upon the water, miles and miles away from the land, ground-fishing with lines a hundred fathoms long.  Then, as the sun dips, the flare of torches will be seen along the sandy beaches as the night-seekers of flying-fish launch their canoes and urge them through the rolling surf beyond the reef, where, for perhaps three or four hours, they will paddle slowly to and fro, just outside the white line of roaring breakers, and return to the shore with their tiny craft half-filled with the most beautiful and wonderful fish in the world.  The Ellice Island method of catching flying-fish would take too long to explain here, much as I should like to do so; my purpose is to describe a very remarkable fish called the palu, in the capture of which these people are the most skilful.  The catching of flying-fish, however, bears somewhat on the subject of this article, as the palu will not take any other bait but a flying-fish, and therefore a supply of the former is a necessary preliminary to palu fishing.

Let us imagine, then, that the bait has been secured, and that a party of palu-fishers are ready to set out from the little island of Nanomaga, the smallest but most thickly populated of the Ellice Group.  The night must be windless and moonless, the latter condition being absolutely indispensable, although, curiously enough, the fish will take the hook on an ordinary starlight night.  Time after time have I tried my luck with either a growing or a waning moon, much to the amusement of the natives, and never once did I get a palu, although other nocturnal-feeding fish bit freely enough.