"Tres jolie," the gendarme said, after explaining by signs and
gestures that thousands of fish would be caught of all sizes from
minnows to sharks, and that the captured fish would boil up and upon
the very sand of the beach.
It is a most successful method of fishing, while its nature is more
that of an outing festival, rather than of a prosaic, food-getting
task. Such fishing parties take place about once a month at Bora
Bora, and it is a custom that has descended from old time. The man
who originated it is not remembered. They always did this thing.
But one cannot help wondering about that forgotten savage of the
long ago, into whose mind first flashed this scheme of easy fishing,
of catching huge quantities of fish without hook, or net, or spear.
One thing about him we can know: he was a radical. And we can be
sure that he was considered feather-brained and anarchistic by his
conservative tribesmen. His difficulty was much greater than that
of the modern inventor, who has to convince in advance only one or
two capitalists. That early inventor had to convince his whole
tribe in advance, for without the co-operation of the whole tribe
the device could not be tested. One can well imagine the nightly
pow-wow-ings in that primitive island world, when he called his
comrades antiquated moss-backs, and they called him a fool, a freak,
and a crank, and charged him with having come from Kansas. Heaven
alone knows at what cost of grey hairs and expletives he must
finally have succeeded in winning over a sufficient number to give
his idea a trial. At any rate, the experiment succeeded. It stood
the test of truth--it worked! And thereafter, we can be confident,
there was no man to be found who did not know all along that it was
going to work.
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