that the trees supplied them all
with enough to eat, and the melancholy Marquesan preferred to sit
and meditate upon his _paepae_ rather than to fish, except when
appetite demanded it. There is a Polynesian word that means
"hungry for fish," and to-day it is only when this word rises to
their tongues or thoughts that they go eagerly to the sea or to the
tooth-like base of the cliffs.

Often we took large quantities of fish among these caves and rocks
by capturing them in bags, using a wooden fan as a weapon. The sport
called for a cool head, marvelous lungs, and skill. It was extremely
dangerous, as the sharks were numerous where fish were plentiful,
and the angler must needs be under the water, in the shark's own
domain.

[Illustration: Pascual, the giant Paumotan pilot and his friends]

[Illustration: A pearl diver's sweetheart]

The best hand and head for this sport in all Hanavave was a girl,
Kikaaki, a name which means Miss Impossibility. She was not handsome,
save with the beauty of youth and abounding health, but her wide
mouth and bright eyes were intelligent and laughter-loving.

Starting early in the morning, we would go to the edge of the bay,
where the coral rises from the ocean floor in fantastic shapes and
builds strange grottoes and cells at the feet of the basalt rocks.
While I held the canoe, Miss Impossibility would remove her shapeless
calico wrapper, and attired only in scarlet _pareu_, her hair piled
high on her head and tied with the white filet of the cocoanut-palm,
she would go overboard in one curving dive, a dozen feet or more
beneath the sea.

When the water was quiet and shadowed by the cliffs, I could see her
through its green translucence, swimming to the coral lairs of the
fish that gleamed in the reflected, penetrating sunlight. Walking on
the sandy bottom, a hand net of straw in one hand, and a stick
shaped like a fan in the other, she would cover a crevice with the
net and with the fan urge the fish into it.

Foolish as was their conduct, the fish appeared to be deceived by
the lure, or made helpless by fear, for they streamed into the
receptacle as Miss Impossibility beat the water or the coral. She
would have seemed to me well named had I never seen her at the sport.

She would usually stay beneath the water a couple of minutes, rising
with her catch to rest for a moment or two with her hand on the edge
of the boat, breathing deeply, before she went down again. Losing
sight