On the latter occasions, the men carried big torches, which they held high in the air with one hand, while they waded out into the water with their spears poised, in readiness to impale the first big fish they came across.
When the spearmen _did_ strike, their aim was unerring, and the struggling fish would be hurled on to the beach to the patient women-folk, who were there waiting for them, with their big nets of grass slung over their backs.

Sometimes a hundred men would be in the shallow water at once, all carrying blazing torches, and the effect as the fishermen plunged and splashed this way and that, with shouts of triumph or disappointment, may be better imagined than described.

In the daytime a rather different method was adopted.

Some acres of the shallow lagoon would be staked out at low water in the shape of an inverted V, an opening being left for the fish to pass through.
The high tide brought the fish in vast shoals, and then the opening would be closed.

When the tide receded, the staked enclosure became, in effect, a gigantic net, filled with floundering fish, big and little.