easily
discerned through the crystal water.

"Hallo! look here," said the mate, "we're right on top of a nice little
family party of sharks. It's their watch below."

Lying closely together on a bottom of sand and coral _debris_ were about
a dozen sharks, heads and tails in perfect line. Their skins were a
mottled brown and yellow, like the crustacean-feeding "tiger shark"
of Port Jack-son. They lay so perfectly still that the mate lowered
a grapnel right on the back of one. He switched his long, thin tail
lazily, "shoved" himself along for a few feet, and settled down again to
sleep, his bedmates taking no notice of the intruding grapnel. Further
on we came across many more--all in parties of from ten to twenty, and
all preserving in their slumber a due sense of regularity of outline in
the disposition of their long bodies.

The natives of the low-lying equatorial islands--the Kingsmill, Gilbert,
Ellice, and Tokelau or Union Groups--are all expert shark fishermen;
but the wild people of Paanopa (Ocean Island) stand _facile princeps_. I
have frequently seen four men in a small canoe kill eight or ten sharks
(each of which was as long as their frail little craft) within three
hours.

SOME PACIFIC ISLANDS FISHES

Of all the food-fishes inhabiting the reefs, lagoons, and tidal waters
of the islands of the North and South Pacific, there are none that are
prized more than the numerous varieties of sand-mullet. Unlike the same
fishes in British and other colder waters, they frequently reach a great
size, some of them attaining two feet in length, and weighing up to ten
pounds; and another notable feature is the great diversity of colour
characterising the whole family. The writer is familiar with at least
ten varieties, and the natives gave me the names of several others
which, however, are seldom taken in sufficient numbers to make them a
common article of diet. The larger kind are caught with hook and line in
water ranging from three to five fathoms in depth, the smaller kinds are
always to be found in the very shallow waters of the lagoons, where they
are taken by nets. At night, by the aid of torches made of dried coconut
leaf, the women and children capture them in hundreds as they lie on
the clear, sandy bottom. In the picturesque lagoons of the Ellice Group
(South Pacific), and especially in that of Nanomea, these fish afford
excellent sport with either rod or hand-line, and sport, too, with
surroundings o