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Updated: June 15, 2025
They brought her about two gallons in buckets made of the looped-up leaves of the taro plant, and poured it into the vessel; then Nalik and old Sru, with rough tongs formed of the midrib of a coconut branch, whipped up eight or ten large red-hot stones from a fire near by, and dropped them into the vessel, the water in which at once began to boil and send up a volume of steam as Seia tipped the entire basketful of crustacean delicacies into the bowl, together with some handfuls of salt.
On the top of all was placed the largest fish, and then the entire oven was rapidly covered up with wild banana leaves in the shape of a mound. The moment Nalik and I had laid down our rods, and whilst the oven was being prepared, Toka and the two other boys sprang into the water at one end of the pool and began to disturb the bottom with their feet.
Then I asked about the big pool. Nalik nodded. "Ay, 'tis deep, very deep, and hath many fish in it. But here where we now sit is a fine place for fish. And there are many wild pigs in the forest." "Let us come here to-morrow. Let us start ere the sun is up, and stay here and fish and shoot till the day be gone."
Far below the sound of the waterfall sung to the dying day, and, as we listened, there came to us the dulled, distant murmur of the combing breakers upon the reef five miles away. "'Tis a fair, good place this, is it not?" whispered Nalik, as he sat beside me "a fair, good place, though it be haunted by the spirits."
Half a mile distant, a jagged, irregular mountain-peak raised high its emerald-hued head in the clear sunshine, and from every lofty tree on both sides of the stream there came the continuous call of the gentle wood-doves and the great grey pigeons. With Nalik and myself there came old Sru and the imp Toka, who at once set to work and found us some small crayfish for bait.
The "devil" was sent up the cocos to lop off branches, which, as they fell, were woven into thatch by the deft, eager hands of the women, who were supervised by Sivi, Nalik's handsome wife, amid much chatter and laughter, each one trying to outvie the other in speed, and all anxious to follow Nalik and myself to the river. The place was well chosen.
We had not long to wait, for presently we heard the dogs give cry, and the silence of the forest was broken by the demoniac yells of Nalik and the "devil," who had started a party of two boars and half a dozen sows with their half-grown progeny, which were lying down around the buttressed sides of a great tika-tree.
The dogs evidently were equally as certain of this as Nalik and Sru, for the moment they saw the two men pick up their heavy hunting-spears they sprang to their feet and began howling and yelping in concert till they were beaten into silence by the women.
"First to thee, Nalik; but biggest to the rebelli"* cried old Sru, as with some difficulty for my rod was too slight for such a fish I landed a lovely four-pounder on the grass. * White man. Nalik laughed again, and before I had cleared my hook from the jaw of my prize he had taken another and then a third, catching each one in his left hand with incredible swiftness and throwing them to the boy.
"There be nothing so sweet to the mouth of the mountain pig as the thick roots of the ti," said Nalik to me in a low voice. "They come here to root them up at this time of the year, before the wild yams are well grown, and the ti both fattens and sweetens. Let us start."
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