g tide swept in
from the ocean. Upon the top of each of these connecting boulders were
piled bundles or long torches made of dried coco-nut branches, which
were to be lighted when the drive began. The total length of the netting
was about two miles, but at one end, that facing the deep water of the
lagoon, there was a wide, unenclosed space. Here, however, were lying
half a dozen canoes, whose outrigger platforms were piled up with
strong nets, which were to be stretched across the opening at the proper
moment.

After looking at the preparations, we returned to the village, and as we
had no time to lose, and the tide was coming in at a great rate over the
reef, we began to dress, or rather undress, for the sport. To each of
us was given a spear, and a number of young women and children were
told off to accompany us with baskets, with half-a-dozen boys as
torch-bearers.

As soon as darkness had fallen the whole village was astir. From every
house men, women and very young children swarmed, these latter without
even the traditional leaf to hide their nakedness, while the grown girls
and women, possibly with the view of not shocking us too much, wore
short--very short--girdles around their loins.

The grown men and youths now launched a number of canoes, and, crowding
into them, paddled out into the lagoon, keeping well away, however,
from the line of nets, the floats of which were now appearing upon the
surface of the water. In each canoe was a large basket filled with a
nasty-looking mass. This was the crushed shells and bodies of _uga_, or
small land crabs, and was to be used as 'burley' to attract the fish to
the wake of the canoes.

Before going further I must mention that at a particular season of the
year--May--many of the Micronesian Islands are visited by vast shoals of
fish much resembling an English salmon. These enter the lagoons from
the ocean in pursuit of smaller fish. These smaller fish, which are a
species of sprat, assemble in incredible quantities, and at night-time
are wont to crowd together in prodigious numbers about the coral
boulders before mentioned, in the same manner that ocean-living fish
will sometimes attach themselves to a ship or other moving substance,
as some protection from pursuit by bonito, albicore, and the fish called
_tautau_. The latter are of nocturnal habit when seeking food, and
during the daytime lie almost motionless near the bottom, where they can
often be seen in serried