The Next Morning We Went Fishing, That Is, Tehei, Charmian, And I
Did, In The Coffin-Shaped Canoe; But This Time The Enormous Sail Was
Left Behind.
There was no room for sailing and fishing at the same
time in that tiny craft.
Several miles away, inside the reef, in a
channel twenty fathoms deep, Tehei dropped his baited hooks and
rock-sinkers. The bait was chunks of octopus flesh, which he bit
out of a live octopus that writhed in the bottom of the canoe. Nine
of these lines he set, each line attached to one end of a short
length of bamboo floating on the surface. When a fish was hooked,
the end of the bamboo was drawn under the water. Naturally, the
other end rose up in the air, bobbing and waving frantically for us
to make haste. And make haste we did, with whoops and yells and
driving paddles, from one signalling bamboo to another, hauling up
from the depths great glistening beauties from two to three feet in
length.
Steadily, to the eastward, an ominous squall had been rising and
blotting out the bright trade-wind sky. And we were three miles to
leeward of home. We started as the first wind-gusts whitened the
water. Then came the rain, such rain as only the tropics afford,
where every tap and main in the sky is open wide, and when, to top
it all, the very reservoir itself spills over in blinding deluge.
Well, Charmian was in a swimming suit, I was in pyjamas, and Tehei
wore only a loin-cloth.
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