CHAPTER XI
Some clever ways of catching fish—How the bonito is landed—Native nets—Pig-hunting—The sly opossum and the crocodile.
Lazy as the Solomon islanders are they are excellent sportsmen, and be it man-hunting, pig-hunting, or fishing, it is all the same, they go in for it with a fine relish. Cunning and dexterity play an important part in their methods, and make up for their want of up-to-date appliances.
At fishing they surpass most native races, their ingenuity in this sport being remarkable. Where the white man will fail with all his latest improvements in fishing tackle, these uncultivated men will succeed with quickly improvised and crude materials.
For bonito-fishing they have a remarkable device, and entice these large fish from the deep sea and catch them as easily as an English boy will secure a stickleback. It is one of the most {114} exciting of their sports to watch. A man stands on a rock, for preference, and throws out a line some thirty or forty feet in length, attached to the end of which is a floating bait of some fatty matter; below him and bending double into the water is another native, who works a little piece of bamboo cut off at the joints and having a hollowed-out groove in it. With his thumb in the end of the hollow and his hand gripping the stick he works this backwards and forwards in the water, giving it a peculiar twist, which makes it send forth a weird and uncanny noise. This sound, so they say, is in imitation of the cry of female or male, I forget which, bonito, and so attracts to it a mate.
Whilst one man is steadily working in this manner, the other on the rock is watching every movement of the native with an alertness and excitement which is shown by his tense attitude. Long before the untrained eye has noticed anything peculiar, this fisher has gradually begun to draw in his bait, and soon the great head of the bonito is seen rising out of the water in an endeavour to catch the bait. But the fisher, who by now is in a perfect steam of excitement, adroitly snatches the bait away only just quickly enough to save it. The bonito dives, and the next instant he is up again {115} and after the tempting morsel at full swing. From that moment a most exciting chase begins, and the extraordinary way in which the native gradually entices the great fish to within a few yards of the shore without frightening it, or allowing it to seize the bait, is as fine a performance as one could wish to see.