54 I^ the South Seas 



in 



of disgust will a fish blow a morsel from his mouth 

 when he finds that it does not suit his palate ! and 

 what a way through the water he will send it ! 



' There is a gigantic fish in these seas called the 

 harpuka or warbuka, but of him I can tell you but 

 little, for him I have never caught. We fished for 

 him persistently and with the most praiseworthy 

 pertinacity. We had cunning maps drawn by a 

 Pakeha and by a Maori, and we engaged a half-caste 

 fisherman so as to have the virtues of the two races 

 both in separation and in combination, but we could 

 not catch a warbuka. So at last we gave it up in 

 despair, and consoled ourselves by coming to the 

 comfortable conclusion that he was a species of 

 ichthyological roc. But one morning, when I was 

 calmly slumbering in my chamber in the " Star " at 

 Auckland, I was suddenly startled by a tremendous 

 hammering at my bedroom door, and by an authori- 

 tative voice shouting: " H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh 

 requests you to get out of bed immediately and to go 

 to see the warbuka which he and the Governor have 

 caught." I lingered for a moment, dreaming of the 

 fairy tales of my childhood, and then I arose, and 

 wended my way down to the Government steamer ; 

 for I thought that no one could dream of a name so 

 well beloved in those parts in vain. Nor was I 

 wrong. There were fish, real fish, such as I had 

 never seen before and have never seen since. Imagine 

 vast tenches — fat, chubby, sporting-looking tenches — 

 ranging from forty to fifty pounds in weight, and 



