st part of the evening in the huts, eating, smoking, and talking,
and overhauling our tackle for the next day. It had been intended that
about midnight we should all go crayfishing in the shallow waters along
the shore of the islets, but this idea had to be abandoned in
consequence of the rain having soaked the coco palms--the dead branches
of which are rolled and plaited into a cylindrical form and used as
torches. The method of catching crayfish is very simple: a number of
men, each carrying a _kaulama_ torch about 6 feet in length in the left
hand, and a small scoop net in the right, walk waist-high through the
water; the crayfish, dazed by the brilliant light, are whipped up into
the nets and dropped into baskets carried by the women and children who
follow. They can only be caught on dark, moonless nights.

* * * * *

When we returned to the village our spoils included besides a great
number of fish, a few turtle and some young frigate birds. The latter
were captured for the purpose of being tamed. I made many subsequent
visits to the two islets, sometimes alone and sometimes with my native
friends, and on each occasion I left these lovely little spots with a
keen feeling of regret, for they are ideal resting-places to him who
possesses a love of nature and the soul of a fisherman.

_Mrs. MacLaggan's "Billy"_

When Tom Denison was quite a young man he was earning a not too
dishonest sort of a living as supercargo of a leaky old ketch owned by
Mrs. Molly MacLaggan of Samoa, which in those days was the Land of
Primeval Wickedness and Original and Imported Sin, Strong Drink, and
Loose Fish generally. Captain "Bully" Hayes also lived in Samoa; his
house and garden adjoined that of Mrs. MacLaggan, and at the back there
was a galvanised iron cottage, inhabited by a drunken French carpenter
named Leger, whose wife was a full-blooded negress, and made kava for
Denison and "Bully" every evening, and used to beat Billy MacLaggan on
the head with a pole about six times a day, and curse him vigorously in
mongrel Martinique French. Billy MacLaggan was Mrs. Molly's male goat,
and as notorious in Samoa as Bully Hayes himself.

I want to try and tell this story as clearly as possible, but there are
so many people concerned, and so many things which really happened
together, though each one seemed to come before the other a little and
try and get into the general jumble, and every one was