The big double canoe was left on the beech, and we went in the launch.Half the canoes paddled off to leeward, while we, with the other half, headed to windward a mile and a half, until the end of our line was in touch with the reef.The leader of the drive occupied a canoe midway in our line.He stood erect, a fine figure of an old man, holding a flag in his hand.He directed the taking of positions and the forming of the two lines by blowing on a conch.
When all was ready, he waved his flag to the right.With a single splash the throwers in every canoe on that side struck the water with their stones.While they were hauling them back--a matter of a moment, for the stones scarcely sank beneath the surface--the flag waved to the left, and with admirable precision every stone on that side struck the water.So it went, back and forth, right and left;with every wave of the flag a long line of concussion smote the lagoon.At the same time the paddles drove the canoes forward and what was being done in our line was being done in the opposing line of canoes a mile and more away.
On the bow of the launch, Tehei, with eyes fixed on the leader, worked his stone in unison with the others.Once, the stone slipped from the rope, and the same instant Tehei went overboard after it.
I do not know whether or not that stone reached the bottom, but I do know that the next instant Tehei broke surface alongside with the stone in his hand.I noticed this same accident occur several times among the near-by canoes, but in each instance the thrower followed the stone and brought it back.
The reef ends of our lines accelerated, the shore ends lagged, all under the watchful supervision of the leader, until at the reef the two lines joined, forming the circle.Then the contraction of the circle began, the poor frightened fish harried shoreward by the streaks of concussion that smote the water.In the same fashion elephants are driven through the jungle by motes of men who crouch in the long grasses or behind trees and make strange noises.
Already the palisade of legs had been built.We could see the heads of the women, in a long line, dotting the placid surface of the lagoon.The tallest women went farthest out, thus, with the exception of those close inshore, nearly all were up to their necks in the water.
Still the circle narrowed, till canoes were almost touching.There was a pause.A long canoe shot out from shore, following the line of the circle.It went as fast as paddles could drive.In the stern a man threw overboard the long, continuous screen of cocoanut leaves.The canoes were no longer needed, and overboard went the men to reinforce the palisade with their legs.For the screen was only a screen, and not a net, and the fish could dash through it if they tried.Hence the need for legs that ever agitated the screen, and for hands that splashed and throats that yelled.Pandemonium reigned as the trap tightened.
But no fish broke surface or collided against the hidden legs.At last the chief fisherman entered the trap.He waded around everywhere, carefully.But there were no fish boiling up and out upon the sand.There was not a sardine, not a minnow, not a polly-wog.Something must have been wrong with that prayer; or else, and more likely, as one grizzled fellow put it, the wind was not in its usual quarter and the fish were elsewhere in the lagoon.In fact, there had been no fish to drive.
"About once in five these drives are failures," Allicot consoled us.
Well, it was the stone-fishing that had brought us to Bora Bora, and it was our luck to draw the one chance in five.Had it been a raffle, it would have been the other way about.This is not pessimism.Nor is it an indictment of the plan of the universe.It is merely that feeling which is familiar to most fishermen at the empty end of a hard day.