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During severe rains an immense volume of muddy water would rush down; yet, strangely enough, the two kinds of fish which inhabited it were just as plentiful as ever as soon as the water cleared. About four o'clock in the morning, when I was sound in slumber, a voice called to me to awaken. It was Nalik. "Come out and look." What a glorious change!
The young girls and women, each carrying a small finely-meshed scoop-net, joined them, and in a tew minutes they had filled a basket with crayfish, some of which were ten inches in length, and weighed over a pound, their tails especially being very large and fleshy. "Shall we boil or bake them?" asked Nalik as the basketful was brought up to me for examination.
Small boy of ten, named Toka, the terror of the village for his illimitable impudence and unsurpassed devilry. He had three dogs. Before we started old Sru, Nalik, and myself had some Hollands, two bottles of which were also placed in the care of Nalik's wife. The "devil," as Toka was called, mimicked us as we drank, smacked his lips and rubbed one hand up and down his stomach.
A gentle breeze swayed the fronds of the coco-palms above us, and already the countless thousands of sea birds, whose "rookery" was on two small islets within the reef and near the village, were awake, and filling the air with their clamour as they, like us, prepared to start off for their day's fishing. Our party consisted of Nalik, his wife and five dogs.
An hour's march brought us to the crest of a spur covered with a species of white cedar, whose branches were literally swarming with doves and pigeons, feeding upon small, sweet-scented berries about the size of English haws. Just beneath us was a deep canyon, at the bottom of which, so Nalik said, was a tiny rivulet which ran through banks covered with wild yams and ti plants.
Suddenly the wicker-work door on the lee side was opened, and Nalik jumped in, dripping with rain, but smiling good-naturedly as usual. "Woa!" he said, taking his long, straight black hair in his hands and squeezing out the water, "'tis no day for us." I ventured an opinion that it might clear off soon.
They were one Nalik and his wife, people living in my own village. The man carried a long single-barrelled German shot-gun, the woman a basket of pigeons. Stepping down the bank, they waded across and joined me. "How came ye here?" they asked, as we sat down together to smoke. I told them, and then learnt that the river ran into the sea through the mangroves at a spot many miles from the village.
The women and girls on the opposite bank laughed and chaffed me, and urged me to hasten, or Nalik would catch five ere I landed another. But the rebelli took no heed of their merriment, for he was quite content to let a few minutes go whilst he examined the glistening beauty which lay quivering and gasping on the sward.
Then, as we had still another hour or two of daylight, and I longed to see the deep, deep pool at the head of the river, even if it were but for a few moments, the old chief Nalik and I started off. It lay before us with many, many bars of golden sunlight striking down through the trees and trying to penetrate its calm, placid bosom with their warm, loving rays.
Our rods were slender bamboos, about twelve feet long, with lines of the same length made of twisted banana fibre as fine as silk, and equally as strong. My hook was an ordinary flatted Kirby, about half the size of an English whiting hook; Nalik preferred one of his own manufacture, made from a strip of tortoise-shell, barbless and highly polished.
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