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By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories
By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore and Other Stories Author:Louis Becke Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 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... more » overhaul it. In a few minutes I was surrounded by an eager and interested group of natives, who examined everything with the greatest curiosity. 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. The feeling had been accentuated by my good friend the Samoan teacher on Nanomaga, himself an ardent fisherman, writing to his brother minister on Nukufetau and informing him that although I was not a high-class Christian I was all right in all other respects, and a good fisherman—"all that he did not know we have taught him, therefore,' he added slyly, " let your young men watch him so that they may learn how to fish in deep and roughwater, such as ours." These remarks were of course duly made public, and caused much indignation, neither the minister nor his flock liking the gibe about the deep, rough water ; also the insinuation that anything about fishing was to be learnt from the new white man was annoying and uncalled for. I must here mention that the natives of De Peyster's Island (Nukufetau) caught all the fish they wanted in the smooth and spacious waters of the lagoon, and were not fond of venturing outside the barrier reef, except during the bonito season, or when the sea was very calm at night, to catch flying-fish. Then, too, the currents outside the reef were swift and dangerous, and the ca...« less