flight from a pursuing _pala_, or that a
shark had seized a turtle in his cruel jaws. Lighting our pipes, we
lowered our lines together according to island etiquette, and touched
bottom at thirty fathoms; then hauled in a fathom or two of line to
avoid fouling the coral. In a few minutes my companion hooked an _utu_,
a sluggish fish, somewhat like a salmon in appearance, with shining
silvery scales and a broad flat head. As he was hauling in, and I was
looking over the side of the canoe to watch it coming up, I felt a
sharp, heavy tug at my own line, and, before I could check it, thirty or
forty yards of line whizzed through my fingers with lightning speed.

"_Lahe'u!_" shouted the teacher, hurriedly making his own line fast,
and whipping up his paddle. "Don't give out any more line or he will run
under the reef, and we shall lose him."

I knew by the vibration and hum of the line as soon as I had it well in
hand that there was a heavy and powerful fish at the end. Ioane,
disregarding the _utu_ as being of no importance in comparison to a
_lahe'u_, was plunging his paddle rapidly into the water, and
endeavouring to back the canoe seaward into deeper water, but, in spite
of his efforts and my own, we were being taken quickly inshore. For some
two or three minutes the canoe was dragged steadily landward, and I knew
that once the _lahe'u_ succeeded in getting underneath the overhanging
ledge of reef, there would be but little chance of our taking him except
by diving, and diving on a moonless night under a reef, and freeing a
fish from jagged branches of coral, is not a pleasant task, although an
Ellice Islander does not much mind it. Finding that I could not possibly
turn the fish, I asked Ioane what I should do. He told me to let go a
few fathoms of line, brace my knee against the thwart, and then trust to
the sudden jerk to cant the fish's head one way or the other. I did as I
was told. Out flew the line, and then came a shock that made the canoe
fairly jump, lifted the outrigger clear out of the water, and all but
capsized her. But the ruse was successful, for, with a furious shake,
_lahe'u_ changed his course, and started off at a tremendous rate,
parallel with the reef, and then gradually headed seaward.

"Let him go," said Ioane, who was carefully watching the tautened-out
line, and steering at the same time. "'Tis a strong fish, but he is _man
tonu_ (truly hooked), and will now tire. But give him no more line, and