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At last, however, the word was passed along the line that the sea end of the drive had been strengthened by additional nets in case a sudden rush might occur; but, by this time, so rapidly was the water running out, that even at the deepest end there was not perhaps two feet available for the now terrified and struggling swarms of tautau.
Dost not know that it is unlucky to talk when fishing for takuo and tautau?" "Dear friend, that we believed only in the heathen days. Now we are Christians." He paused a moment, then raised his face to the stars and softly murmured, "Good mornin' kâpen haad you you have goot foyage and wesser and fair wesser?" Then he looked at me interrogatively. I took no notice.
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.
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.
And then, at a signal given by one of the outside canoes, the torches sprang into flame, and by the bright light that flooded the scene the most extraordinary sight was revealed, for from one side to the other the great inclosure was full of magnificent tautau about three feet six in length.
Three or four of the tautau placed in a basket was as much as a woman could carry, and, although everyone present worked hard, some thousands of fish were not taken. Many of these, however, were not dead, and, with the incoming tide, swam off again.
What little water was left was beaten into froth and foam by their violent struggles, and the light from the torches showed that a space of about five acres in extent was covered with a shining, silvery mass of splendid tautau, intermixed with a small number of gorgeous-hued rock-fish, cray-fish, and some hawk-bill turtle. The work of picking up the prizes went on for at least two hours.
Once some fifty or sixty tautau came right up to the boulder on which we stood, and were so dazed by the glare of light that poured down on them, that some permitted themselves to be captured by the hand. Lower and lower fell the water, and as the shore end of the trap became dry, the fish were gradually forced to come closer and closer together as their swimming space diminished.
The tautau had left off eating the bait thrown them from the canoes, and were attacking the myriads of small fish that clustered round the boulders.
Some thousands of tautau were split open and dried upon platforms in the same manner as the natives of Eastern Polynesia dry flying-fish, and the Fraser River Indians their salmon. We succeeded in buying a fine lot of turtle shell from the trader, as well as some from the king and his mother.
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