I have always loved fishing since I was old enough to hold a rod and
cast out into the surf at home, and now, as I look back on the months
spent with my uncle in the South Seas, I know that my happiest memories
of Iriatai are of the long hours in a canoe with Marama in the lagoon
or on the open sea beyond the reef. It was fishing in unspoiled
waters--fishing to dream about in after years. Our primitive tackle,
much of which was fashioned by our own hands, did not detract from the
charm of the sport, and the background--the land, the sea, the sky--was
hauntingly and strangely beautiful.
Some of those nights were unforgettable--calm nights when we lay off
the reef from sunset till dawn began to brighten in the east. In all
that solitude our lantern was the only light, the only sign of man.
Iriatai lay like a shadow on the sea, stretching off vaguely to the
south, and the heavens above us were powdered with stars of a
brilliance I had never known before. The native boy was a better
astronomer than I; he had names for many of the constellations, and
strange old stories to tell of them. Castor and Pollux, the Twins,
sinking on the horizon to the west, he called _Pipiri-Ma_--a boy and a
girl, he told me, who had lived in very ancient times and who, because
of their unkind parents, had fled away to the skies. The Southern
Cross was _Tatauro_; the Scorpion was a great fishhook, flung into the
sky after a god had used it to pull up the islands of the Paumotus; the
Pleiades, visible in the east an hour before the dawn, he called
_Matarii_--the Little Eyes, and told me a pretty story of their origin.
Much of our fishing was done at night, when we fished offshore for the
great bottom-feeders of the South Pacific: the deep-water albicore, the
castor-oil fish, and the _manga_--a long black creature shaped like an
enormous pickerel, with goggle-eyes and rows of formidable teeth.
Our custom was to start an hour before sunset and paddle north to a
break between the two long islands, where we dragged our canoe through
the ankle-deep wash of the barrier, waited our moment, and slipped out
through the surf. The outer face of the reef shelved off steeply, and
our line, which reached the bottom at two hundred fathoms, would have
reached the reef as well. Marama usually took the stern, paddling
gently, while I did the fishing forward. Our bait was fish, saved from
the previous day's catch and salted. I chose a morsel large as a man's
fist and tied it with strong thread to the point of one of the great
wooden hooks used in this deep-sea fishing: a fork of ironwood, six
inches from tip to tip, and barbed with a cod-hook lashed on to point
down and inward. It was useless, I learned, to fish with an ordinary
hook for these dwellers on the bottom. Their habit of swimming down
vertically, to seize the bait from above, made necessary the use of our
barbaric implement. When my hook was baited, I fastened a large pebble
to the line, with a special hitch that Marama had taught me. Coil
after coil ran out as the pebble sank, until at last I felt the
slackening which told me that it had touched bottom. Hauling up a yard
or two, I gave the jerk which freed my coral sinker, and settled myself
to wait. Sometimes an hour passed without a strike, and then, when I
was least prepared for it, some monster of a hundred pounds seized my
hook with a rush that carried my arm elbow-deep into the black water
alongside. Hand over hand I brought him slowly to the surface till he
lay wallowing beside the canoe, eyes bulging with the release from the
pressure of his deep-sea haunts. A blow with the blunt side of our
whale-spade ended his struggles, and taking hold by the gills, we
tilted the canoe and slid the quivering body inboard.
Sometimes, as my fish neared the surface, I felt a sudden slackening of
the line--one of the small sharks that prowled along the reef at night
had helped himself, leaving only a bodiless and gaping head upon the
hook. Once or twice, when the marauder rose close to our canoe, Marama
sprang to his feet in a rage--keen-bladed spade in hand--and ended the
shark's life with a cutting blow forward of the eyes. At those times
we seized our paddles and made off swiftly for new fishing-grounds; for
the scene of the ensuing feast was no place for our light canoe.
Fishing by night meant sleeping through the warm hours of the day.
Sometimes, when we wearied of this, the order was reversed and we went
out at daybreak to pursue the schools of bonito far offshore. The
lures for bonito are made of mother-of-pearl, and the fisherman must
carry six or seven different shades to suit the varying conditions of
sea and sky. Marama selected half a dozen large pearl-shells, shading
from light to dark, and marked with a pencil on the thickest part of
each the outline of a small fish. When this was done we took our shell
to the shop my uncle had set up ashore, and set to work with vise and
hacksaw to cut out the lures. Then came the grinding and polishing,
and finally a barbless hook of brass was attached to each, the line
made fast to the forward end, and a tuft of coconut fibre bound on
across the rear. We tied the lines to a stiff pole of bamboo, ten or
twelve feet long and equipped with a ring at the butt end, in which to
hook the lures when not in use.
Bonito-fishing was hard work and not unspiced with danger,--the risk of
being swamped or blown offshore in a squall,--but it had a fascination
of its own. We used to paddle half a mile out to sea and wait in the
morning calm, on the lookout for birds. At sunrise the boobies and
noddy terns left their roosting-places by hundreds and cruised about
over the sea, singly or in little bands, in search of breakfast. We
watched them flying this way and that until at last, perhaps a mile
away, a dozen noddies began to circle and dive. Then it was time to
seize our paddles and strain our backs to make for the birds at top
speed. Keener eyes than ours had been on the watch, and before a
minute had passed hungry sea-birds were flapping from all directions
toward the school of fish. The small fish, pursued by both bonito and
birds, were far from remaining stationary; sometimes they sounded and
disappeared altogether; sometimes, when our backs were aching with an
hour's chase, they swept off to windward at a pace that made us lay
down our paddles in despair. There were days when we went home worn
out and empty-handed, but there were other days when luck was with us
and we drove the canoe into the midst of ravenous schools. Then, while
the man forward paddled with all his might, the stern-man faced about,
long rod in hand and lure skittering over the waves behind us. A hasty
trial proved which shade of mother-of-pearl was most attractive, and
next moment fish after fish came tumbling aboard--fat, steel-blue, and
vibrant. There were days when we hooked and landed thirty fish in half
as many minutes, before we sank down exhausted to rest, leaving the
birds to circle off above the foaming sea.
Sometimes, when we could get bait, we enjoyed a sport even more
thrilling than bonito-fishing--trolling along the reef at daybreak for
tunny, barracuda, and the giant cavally of the Pacific. A silvery
species of mullet proved the best lure for the fish that lay in wait in
the caverns along the outer edge of the reef, and many of our
afternoons were spent in mullet-catching. First of all we prepared a
mass of paste, made of flour or arrowroot, and with this for bait, we
paddled to a place in the lagoon where the water shoaled to three or
four feet over a coral bottom. Our tackle was a stick of light wood
eighteen inches long, attached by a trace to twenty feet of line, and
fitted with a small hook on a leader at either end. One of us baited
the hooks with bits of paste and stood ready to cast the stick, while
the other threw pieces of our dough ahead of the motionless canoe.
Presently the water would dimple and swirl with rising mullet--it was
time to cast. The float lay quietly for a moment--bobbed--jerked
disappeared under water, with a pair of fat mullet, as often as not,
fast on the hooks. We kept them alive in an openwork basket floating
alongside, and towed our catch back to the Tara, in readiness for the
morning's fishing.
An hour before sunrise we dragged our canoe over the reef, shot out
through the breakers, and paddled to our favorite trolling-grounds--a
shoal which ran out a quarter of a mile to sea. Our hook for this kind
of fishing was equipped with a leader of piano-wire, which was passed
lengthwise through the body of a mullet and pulled through the mouth
until the shank of the hook was out of sight. Then the lips were
lashed to the wire with a bit of thread and the leader made fast to the
end of a hundred yards of heavy line. Arranged in this way and towed
at a good pace behind the canoe, the mullet flashed and zigzagged
through the water in imitation of a living fish--an imitation so
perfect that many a wary old dweller on the reef was deceived and came
rushing upward to his death.
The handling of these powerful fish required all our skill, and Marama,
being more experienced than I, usually took the stern on
trolling-expeditions. Making the line fast to the outrigger-pole which
crossed the canoe behind his seat, he gave the word, and we began to
paddle our hardest, following the edge of the shoal. As the sun rose,
one could look down and see the changing colors of the coral--every
fold and crevice clearly visible ten fathoms beneath us. There were
certain crannies and caverns where we knew the big fish lay, and as we
passed above them we increased our efforts to make speed. In this kind
of sport there was no holding the line to feel for a bite; we were
never in doubt when a monster tunny or barracuda struck. The canoe
quivered with the shock. Sometimes we fought for half an hour while
the hooked fish towed us in rushes, this way and that. One old
barracuda, I remember,--seven feet long and with the jaws of a
shark,--pulled us more than a mile before he lay exhausted at the
surface.
We seldom returned from trolling till the trade wind came up at eight
or nine o'clock, for a good catch, sufficient for two or three days,
meant rest and time for other amusements. The weather was hot of
course, and we had no ice, but the native method of cooking--baking
over and over again, which improves the flavor with each succeeding
day--permitted fish to be kept for as long as a week. On days of
leisure we rested, overhauled our tackle, or went in search of the
shellfish which abounded at Iriatai.
There were lobsters, crabs, and sea snails on the reef, clams and
mussels in the lagoon, and best of all,--to be found on patches of
shallow sandy bottom,--there were _varos_, creatures whose repulsive
English name is "sea centipede." They look like the tail of a lobster,
with rows of legs along the sides and a small head, armed with a pair
of wicked nippers, said to inflict a poisoned wound. The varo is no
beauty, but if it is broiled over a charcoal fire and eaten hot with
melted butter, I agreed with my uncle that the sea produced nothing
half so good.
One calm morning, when there was a plentiful supply of fish aboard,
Marama suggested that we try our luck at varo-fishing and showed me the
tackle he had made the afternoon before. It consisted of half a dozen
slender sticks of wood to which rows of small fishhooks were lashed,
points out. Each stick was provided with a few feet of line and a
light float, made fast to the upper end. While I was examining these
curious snares, my uncle passed along the deck and stopped at sight of
us.
"Going after varos, eh?" he remarked. "The men used to say there were
plenty of them here. Good luck to you--we'll have a feast here tonight
if you can get some!"
The native boy threw his snares and a few pieces of smelly fish into
our canoe and we paddled to the western shore of the lagoon, where a
bottom of mud and sand ran out from shore. He allowed the canoe to
drift over the shoal while he scanned the bottom through the calm
water, clear as glass. Here and there I saw that the sand was pitted
with holes, the burrows of various marine creatures; and presently
Marama pointed down to one, smaller than the rest and surrounded by a
little mound of sand. "That is the dwelling of the varo," he said, "I
can tell by its freshness and the smallness of the opening that he is
at home."
I held the canoe in place while he took up one of the snares, tied a
bit of fish to the upper end, and unwound the short line attached to
the float. Then he tucked up his pareu and went overboard. Taking a
long breath and working with head and shoulders submerged, he enlarged
the mouth of the burrow until its full size was exposed and inserted
the baited stick--gently, so as not to alarm the creature inside.
Varos were plentiful at this place; we set all our snares within a
radius of fifty yards and sat at leisure in the canoe, watching the
floats for the first signs of life. We had not long to wait; Marama
pointed to one of the floats which was beginning to bob and twitch; a
few strokes of the paddle brought us alongside and he went overboard
again.
The fishhooks on the snares were lashed on in tiers of three, pointing
out and up. The bait was tied to the upper half of the stick, so that
in order to get at it, the varo was obliged to pass the uppermost tier
of hooks. As it tore the fish with its nippers and crammed the pieces
into its mouth, its hard back was against the wall of the burrow and
its more vulnerable under-parts in range of the barbs. Marama put his
head under water again, seized the end of the stick and held the varo
against the side of its hole; then, with a quick pull, he sank his
hooks into the creature's under joints and held up the snare with a
triumphant shout, the captive struggling and waving its claws. "Take
care you are not hurt," he told me as he broke off the nippers. "They
cut like scissors and they are poisoned--the wounds will fester and
swell for weeks!"
At ten o'clock, when the breeze came up, we paddled back to the
schooner with a score of varos in the bottom of our canoe, a feast for
all hands.
As we crossed the lagoon Marama spoke to me suddenly at the end of a
long silence. "Listen, Tehare," he said,--"Tehare" was as near as he
could come to pronouncing my name,--"let us speak together, for there
is a plan in my mind. I dare not ask Seroni myself. Fishing is the
work he gave me, but he is your father's brother and if you desire to
do the thing that I propose, perhaps you will speak to him. You have
learned much about our fishing and you see how easy it is to provide
for the Tara's needs: two or three nights each week give us more fish
than we can use. It is in my mind that on days when there is fish in
plenty we might take this canoe and go out with the others to dive. I
can dive deeper than one need go in this lagoon, and you can pull up
the basket and open shell, since men are not accustomed to diving in
your land. We shall get much shell, and perhaps a great pearl like the
one Maruia found. What say you--will you ask Seroni?"