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Updated: June 6, 2025


Now for the preceding twelve months I had been living on the little island of Nanomaga, a day's sail from Nukufetau; and between Nanomaga and Nukufetau there was a great bitterness of long standing the Nanomagans claimed to be the most daring canoe-men and expert fishermen in all the eight isles of the Ellice Group, and the people of Nukufetau resented the claim strongly.

Nearly a year passed before Big Harry, with his daughter Fetu, sailed into the placid waters of Nukufetau Lagoon, and of the glad meeting of those four happy souls there is no need to tell. Denison, the supercargo of the Indiana was always reproaching Packenham, the skipper, for getting the ship into trouble by his inconsiderate and effusive good-nature "blind stupidity," Denison called it.

The rest of the islanders had gone round in their canoes to the weather side of the little island to fish for takuo, for we were expecting a malaga, or party of visitors from the Island of Nukufetau in a day or two, and unusual supplies of fish had to be obtained, to sustain, not only the island's record as the fishing centre of the universe, but the people's reputation for hospitality.

The island bearing the name Nombre de Jesus, is misnamed, evidently as the result of interference on the part of the cartographer, for, according to the narrative, it lies at many days' sail from the first land sighted in the Solomon Group, and has been identified, as I have said before, with Nukufetau in the Ellice Group.

Of the nine hundred dollars I shall take seven hundred; for it is to my mind that if these tales I hear of these far-off islands be true, then shall I buy from the chiefs there a piece of land, and get men to build a house for me; and if all goeth well with me, I shall return here to Nukufetau within a year. Then shall we sail thither and dwell there.

'He comes from near there. He is of Nukufetau. "Then let him stay on shore to-night, for there are here with me a man and a woman from Nanomaga; they can talk together. And my wife Solepa, too, will be well pleased to see him, for her mother was a Samoan, and this man can talk to her in her mother's tongue.

To his fellow white men and the natives of the island of Nukufetau on which he lived he was simply "Harry"; to those of the other islands of the group he was Hari Tino Kéhé, Big Harry.

"May it be so, Pâkía, for I am weary of waiting. Ten months have come and gone since I first put foot on this land of Nukufetau, and a ship was to have come here in four."

Before him was spread a sheet-chart of the Ellice Group, and another of the Island of Nukufetau, which he was studying intently. Standing at the back of the captain's chair was a short, stout, broad-shouldered man, with a heavy black moustache and hawk-like features, who followed with interest the movements of the captain's slender brown hand over the chart.

The Fisher Folk of Nukufetau Early one morning, about a week after I had settled down on Nukufetau as a trader, I opened my chest of fishing-gear and began to overhaul it. In a few minutes I was surrounded by an eager and interested group of natives, who examined everything with the greatest curiosity.

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