oked.

Saturday's parties went far into the woods to gather a choice kind of
fei, and the oranges and limes of the foot-hills. Raiere, Matatini,
and another boy, Tahitua, hunted the shrimp and eel. After our suppers,
about seven or eight o'clock, when it was quite dark, we equipped
ourselves for the chase, each with a torch and two or three lances,
all but Tahitua, who carried a bag.

We followed the grand chemin, as Alfred called it, along the lagoon
and past the clump of trees in which lived Uritaata, whom we saw
sleeping peacefully a dozen feet from the earth in the branches of
a mango. He lay on his back, with his arms above his little head,
and one foot grasping a leaf, and did not arouse to notice our
passing. The Tahitians gave him wide avoidance, with a mutter of
exorcism. We descended the bank, and entered the stream at a point
just below the last hut of the village.

Raiere cast a glow upon the water with his torch, and we saw the
shrimp resting upon the bottom or leaping into the air in foot-wide
bounds. He poised his smallest lance and thrust it with a very quick,
but exact, motion, so that almost every time he impaled a shrimp upon
its prongs. The oura was instantly withdrawn, and Tahitua received it
in his bag. All but he then began in earnest the quest of the bonnes
bouches. We separated a hundred feet or so, and treading slowly the
pebbled or bouldered and often slippery floor of the river, keeping to
the shallow places, we lighted the rippling waters with our torches,
and sought to spear the agile and fearful prey. The oura lances were
five feet long, not thicker than a fat finger, and fitted with three
slender prongs of iron--nails filed upon the basalt rock. One saw the
faintest glimpse of a shrimp on the bottom, or a red shadow as the
animal darted past, and only the swiftest coordination of mind and body
won the prize. Whereas Raiere and even Matatini secured most of those
they struck at, I made many laughable failures. I missed the still
body through the deceptive shadows of the water, or failed to strike
home because of the lightning-like movements of the alarmed shrimp.

The sport was fascinating. The water was as warm as fresh milk,
transparent, and with here a gentle and there a rapid current. A
million stars glittered in a sky that was very near, and the trees and
vegetation were in mysterious shadows. Only when our torches lit the
darkness did we perceive the actual forms of the cocoanuts