34 
Wild Life in Southern Seas. 
The big man springs to his feet, followed by 
his wife, and in a moment the whole village is 
awake, and the men run beachward to their 
canoes ; for the flock of gogo means that a shoal 
of bonito, perhaps twenty thousand or more, 
are passing the island on their way to Tia 
Kau. 
Before the men, laden with their fishing 
tackle, have reached the canoes, the village 
children are there, throwing off" the coverings of 
mats in readiness for launching, and then, with a 
merry clamour of voices, the slender craft are 
lifted up and carried down to the water’s edge. 
The white man, too, goes with them in one 
Muliao’s canoe, and the women laugh and wish 
him luck as they see him strip to the waist like 
one of their own people, and show a skin almost 
as brown. 
Over the reef they go, thirty or more canoes, 
paddling to the west. There, a mile beyond, is 
a vast flock of gogo -—a small, sooty tern—the 
density of whose swaying cloud is mingled with 
the snowy white of gulls. How they flutter, 
and turn, and dive, and soar aloft to dive 
again, feasting upon the shining baby kanae , or 
mullet, that seek to escape from the ravenous 
