zens and dozens of them kauwhai, cavalle, yellow-tail,
schnapper--lovely fish of delicious flavour and goodly size. Then one of
us got a fish which made him yell, "Shark! shark!" with all his might.
He had a small line of American cotton, staunch as copper wire,
but dreadfully cutting to the hands. When he took a turn round the
logger-head, the friction of the running line cut right into the white
oak, but the wonderful cord and hook still held their own. At last the
monster yielded, coming in at first inch by inch, then more rapidly,
till raised in triumph above the gunwhale--a yellow-tail six feet long.
I have caught this splendid fish (ELAGATIS BIPINNULATIS) many times
before and since then, but never did I see such a grand specimen as this
one--no, not by thirty or forty pounds. Then I got a giant cavalle. His
broad, shield-like body blazed hither and thither as I struggled to ship
him, but it was long ere he gave in to superior strength and excellence
of line and hook.

Meanwhile, the others had been steadily increasing our cargo, until,
feeling that we had quite as much fish as would suffice us, besides
being really a good load, I suggested a move towards the ship. We were
laying within about half a mile of the shore, where the extremity of the
level land reached the cliffs. Up one of the well-worn tracks a fine,
fat goat was slowly creeping, stopping every now and then to browse upon
the short herbage that clung to the crevices of the rock. Without saying
a word, Polly the Kanaka slipped over the side, and struck out with
swift overhead strokes for the foot of the cliff. As soon as I saw what,
he was after, I shouted loudly for him to return, but he either could
not or would not hear me. The fellow's seal-like ability as a swimmer
was, of course, well known to me, but I must confess I trembled for
his life in such a weltering whirl of rock-torn sea as boiled among the
crags at the base of that precipice. He, however, evidently knew what
he was going to do, and, though taking risks which would have certainly
been fatal to an ordinary swimmer, was quite unafraid of the result.

We all watched him breathlessly as he apparently headed straight for
the biggest outlying rock--a square, black boulder about the size of an
ordinary railway car. He came up to it on the summit of a foaming
wave; but just as I looked for him to be dashed to pieces against its
adamantine sides, he threw his legs into the air and disappeared.