masses. As soon as night falls they rise to the
surface and give chase to flying-fish and other surface-swimming ocean
fish. In shape they are very similar to a salmon, but do not possess
the same deepness of body and general fulness. Their heads consist of
a series of long plates, and their jaws are armed with rows of serrated
bone plates. In colour they are a very beautiful iridescent silver along
the sides and belly, the back and head being a deep, glossy blue. When
full grown their length is slightly over four feet, and weight about
twenty-five pounds. They are as voracious as the pike, swim with
extraordinary swiftness at night-time, and will take the hook eagerly
if baited with a whole flying-fish; their flesh is somewhat delicate in
flavour and greatly relished by the natives of Micronesia, who regard it
as second only to the universally esteemed flying-fish.

Two or three days before we made the little group of islands, immense
droves of these _tautau_, as the natives of Eastern Polynesia call them,
had been hovering about the reefs, and the people were now to endeavour
to tempt them into the trap set for them with such care and labour.

For about a quarter of an hour not a sound broke the silence of the
night. We were in the midst of some three or four hundred natives, who
only spoke in whispers for fear of alarming the fish. All round the
deeper portion of the chain of nets was a line of canoes, filled with
women and girls, who held torches in their hands ready to light up the
moment the signal was given. Further in towards the shore, where the
water was not too deep to prevent them keeping on their feet, were
numbers of girls and children standing close together, their bodies
almost touching, and the floats of the nets touching their bosoms;
we white men, with the trader, were standing together, with our
torch-bearers, upon a flat-topped coral boulder.

Suddenly a whisper ran along the line of watchers--the canoes were
coming. One by one we made them out, the paddlers dipping their paddles
into the water in silence, as one of their number in each canoe threw
out double handfuls of the crushed crab 'burley.' As they approached
nearer to us we became aware of a peculiar lapping, splashing noise, as
of hundreds of bare feet walking in water a few inches deep.

'That's the fish,' whispered the trader. 'Look at them--they are coming
in in thousands.'

And then even our unaccustomed eyes could see that the wat