The presence of Barker in the ship, and the working by Mildmay of the
"traverse" which that presence seemed to render desirable, somewhat
prolonged the passage of the _Flying Fish_ to von Schalckenberg's
pearl-island. A full week thus elapsed between the date upon which they
had taken the man on board, and that upon which they arrived at their
destination--during which nothing was sighted.
But Barker made that week a lively time indeed for the rest of the
party; for what between his quaint manners and mode of expression, and
the interminable string of yarns that he spun, he kept them continuously
at the high-water level of hilarity. He possessed in a very high degree
the faculty of telling a story humorously; he even contrived to infuse a
certain measure of humour into the relation of his most recent
misfortunes; and, finding himself in touch with a thoroughly
appreciative audience, he appeared to throw himself heart and soul into
the task of entertaining them, by way of repayment of their hospitality.
And when, presently, they began to grow somewhat accustomed to his
singularities of manner and speech, and their sensitiveness to it had
begun to wear off, they told themselves and each other that, queer fish
as he was, he was "not half a bad sort."
The only quality, indeed, in him that still continued to jar upon them
was his phenomenal inquisitiveness. He appeared not to know the meaning
of rudeness or impertinence; he sought to pry into everything, and
seemed genuinely surprised and puzzled when Sir Reginald somewhat curtly
yet courteously excused himself from complying with his request to be
shown all over the ship, and have everything explained to him. Yet it
was almost impossible to feel angry with him, because he appeared to be
so overwhelmingly grateful for his deliverance from imprisonment upon
that mere speck of an out-of-the-way, inhospitable islet that he was
always talking about it, always striving to give expression to his
gratitude in some way or other. To such an extent was this the case,
indeed, that it quickly became embarrassing, almost to the extent of
annoyance, to the rest of the party. There was nothing they did that he
did not want to assist in; and they found the utmost difficulty in
making him understand that they would really prefer that he did not take
his turn with the others at the night-watches in the pilot-house.
They quickly realised that it would be quite impossible for them to
preserve from him the secret of the nature of their operations at the
pearl-island; they therefore made a virtue of necessity, and frankly
told him all about the matter, merely retaining the position of the
island from him. As might be expected, he exhibited the utmost interest
in their plans; promptly demanded to be made useful in the carrying out
of their operations, and--also as might be expected--betrayed no
diffidence about making the suggestion that he should be permitted to
share in such good fortune as might attend their labours.
The atoll was sighted a little after ten o'clock in the morning, and by
eleven o'clock the ship had safely entered the lagoon, and come to
anchor as nearly as possible in its centre. The islet--which, as von
Schalckenberg's book had stated, was little more than a mere rock--was
of coral formation, and appeared to be merely a volcanic or seismic
upheaval of one small portion of the oval ring of coral that formed the
lagoon. Looked at broadside-on, so to speak, it bore some resemblance
in appearance to a whale asleep on the water. Sand had washed up and
become lodged among the inequalities of the rock-surface, and the
deposits of birds had converted this into soil that, poor as it looked,
sufficed to nourish a small clump of coconut palms that reared
themselves from the highest point of the islet, which rose some thirty
feet above the surface of the ocean. The shoal upon which the
oyster-bed was reputed to exist lay two miles to the westward of the
islet, and had been sighted from the deck of the _Flying Fish_ shortly
before her arrival in the lagoon, its position being indicated by a very
distinct discoloration of the water.
The ship having been moored, the two boats were lowered into the water,
and the party made an excursion to the islet, to view the place, and
fill in the interval before luncheon. The islet was so small, however,
and so absolutely devoid of interest, that half an hour sufficed the
party to become perfectly acquainted with it; but they were repaid for
their trouble by the discovery of a long, shallow, saucer-like
depression, with a smooth bottom, that offered perfectly ideal
facilities for the deposit of the oysters while undergoing the process
of decomposition, which is the preliminary to the finding of such pearls
as they may contain. There was no doubt that this would render the
island and its immediate vicinity almost intolerably offensive to the
olfactory nerves; but as the lagoon was to windward of the islet, and
the ship was moored a mile and a half away from it, it was believed that
her occupants would suffer no inconvenience from that source.
Luncheon over, two small nets, each with a sufficient length of rope to
reach from the surface to the sea-bottom on the shoal, together with a
couple of shovels and two rope ladders, were got out and put into the
boats, while Mildmay and the professor arrayed themselves in their
diving-suits and armour. Thus equipped, the two boats, with the six men
of the party, set out for the shoal, Sir Reginald, the professor, and
Barker going in one boat, while Mildmay, Lethbridge, and Sziszkinski
went in the other. The passage through the reef lay to windward; the
boats therefore were obliged to run some two miles to the eastward, to
get outside and clear of the reef, and then go either north or south for
about a distance of some two and a half miles to get round to the back
of the reef and the island ere they could shape a course for the shoal.
Luckily, although there was a considerable amount of swell, which burst
upon the reef with a continuous sound of thunder, and threw up a wall of
diamond spray some twenty feet high into the clear, sun-lit air, the
trade-wind was blowing but a moderate breeze, and there was consequently
not much sea. The boats therefore made excellent time, and arrived upon
the shoal some three-quarters of an hour after leaving the ship. And
here, again, they were favoured, from the fact that the shoal lay almost
dead to leeward of the atoll, and but two miles distant from it; they
were therefore in somewhat sheltered water, both as regards the swell
and the sea, neither of which broke on the shoal.
The boats having anchored within a few yards of each other, well in
toward the centre of the shoal, a rope ladder was dropped over the side
of each, the nets were lowered to the bottom, each of them containing
one of the shovels; and then Mildmay and the professor descended to the
bottom, where they met. The water was beautifully clear, and the light
good. They were therefore able to see without difficulty; and a single
glance sufficed to show them that the account of the shoal in von
Schalckenberg's book was in no sense an exaggerated one. They stood
upon a bed of pearl-oysters, so thick that the sand could not be seen.
Moreover, the oysters were of unusual size; not, of course, that that
signified anything, because it is not always the largest oyster that
yields the finest pearls.
The professor glanced about him, taking in as comprehensive a view of
his surroundings as the dense medium in which he was immersed would
permit, took up an oyster or two at haphazard, looked at them, and then
said to Mildmay--
"It appears to me to be quite useless to attempt anything in the way of
making a selection; the only thing that we can do is to take the oysters
as they come, shovel them into the net until it is full, and then signal
to those in the boats to draw them up. And, while doing this, we must
keep a wary eye for sharks--not that the creatures could hurt us,
attired, as we are, in this armour, but there is this danger, that we
might be seized and carried so far away before we could free ourselves
that it might be impossible to find our way back to the boats. If,
therefore, any of them should appear upon the scene, we must use our
daggers, and that right quickly."
The surrounding water was, however, quite clear of everything of a
menacing character at that moment. The two men therefore got to work,
spreading the mouths of their nets wide open, and simply shovelling the
oysters into them until they were full, when they signalled to those in
the boats to haul them up. This process they continued for something
over an hour, until the boats were about half-full, and the time had
arrived for them to return to the island.
The return journey was uneventful, except in so far as it showed them
that the boats were loaded quite as deeply as was desirable for the safe
negotiation of that part of the passage which lay to windward of the
atoll; and when once they were safely inside the lagoon, they proceeded
straight to the spot already chosen by them for the purpose, and
discharged their cargoes into the shallow basin of rock. This
afternoon's haul amounted to some thousands of oysters, but they now saw
that the basin was sufficiently capacious to accommodate at least a
fortnight's catch, reckoning upon the basis of their afternoon's work.
On the following day the same party again went out, making two trips to
the shoal, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, thus continuing
for a fortnight, by which time their saucer-like depression in the rock
was full, while about half of the entire catch was in a sufficiently
advanced stage of decomposition to admit of being examined and the
pearls abstracted therefrom. This, as will be supposed, was a most
disgusting and intensely disagreeable task, but the returns were so
unexpectedly rich that the revolting character of the work was quickly
lost sight of in the interest with which discovery after discovery was
made of pearls that, for size, shape, and purity of colour, promised to
prove priceless. Their first day's work among the putrid fish resulted
in their taking on board at night an ordinary ship's bucket nearly
half-full of pearls, a considerable proportion of which might be ranked
as specially valuable. The proportion of seed pearls was singularly
small, and, toward the close of the second day's work, was considered of
so little value, comparatively, as to be not worth the time and trouble
of collecting. To attempt to put anything more than the merest
approximate estimate of value upon their catch was of course quite out
of the question; but when the result of their third day's labour was
added to that of their first and second, von Schalckenberg, who claimed
to be something of an authority in such matters, declared that the whole
must be worth not far short of one hundred thousand pounds, if indeed it
did not exceed that value.
The enthusiasm with which the men had been working at their highly
unpleasant task of extracting the pearls from their loathsome
envelopment had so far cooled by the end of the third day that it had
been unanimously resolved to take a change of occupation on the
following day by again going out to the shoal and securing a further
supply of oysters. The suggestion emanated from von Schalckenberg in
the first instance; he made it upon the plea that such a change was very
highly desirable in the interests of their health; and the proposal had
been eagerly welcomed by all hands, most of whom had already begun to
complain of nausea, and to exhibit a more or less marked distaste for
food.
That there really was distinct need for such a precaution seemed to be
borne out next morning by the fact that when the party mustered for
breakfast Barker was found to be an absentee, and upon George being
dispatched to his cabin to awaken him, upon the assumption that he had
overslept himself, the man presently returned with a message to the
effect that the absentee was suffering from a splitting headache, that
he required no breakfast, and that "he guessed" he would spend the
morning in bed, if it was all the same to the others. Whereupon von
Schalckenberg paid him a professional visit, looked at his tongue, asked
him a few questions, and sent him a draught to take. Sir Reginald--who,
now that his wife and child were with him, had evinced a rather marked
tendency toward over-anxiety in all matters relating to sickness--was
very particular in his inquiries as to the invalid's condition, and was
with difficulty reassured by the professor's assertion that there was
certainly nothing worse the matter with him than, possibly, a slight
attack of biliousness. The remaining five men, therefore, went away in
the boats after breakfast, Sir Reginald taking the precaution to carry
his telephone along with him, in order that Lady Olivia might have the
means of communicating with him in the event of further and more serious
symptoms manifesting themselves in the case of the sick man.
Arrived at the shoal, the divers--Mildmay and von Schalckenberg as
before--went down and got to work; but Barker's absence was felt when it
came to hauling up the full nets, the weight of which proved to be
rather too much for one man to handle, and it therefore became necessary
to haul up the nets one at a time, discharge both into the same boat,
and, when she was as full as was thought desirable, leave her, shifting
over to the other boat and loading her in the same way. The consequence
of this was that they were late in completing their cargoes, and it was
already considerably past the luncheon-hour when at length they lifted
their anchors and started back toward the lagoon. Nothing had been
heard in the mean time from Lady Olivia, from which circumstance it was
deduced that the patient was at all events no worse.
Scarcely, however, had the boats got under way when the bell of the
telephone in Sir Reginald's pocket began to ring, and he whipped the
instrument out with the remark--
"Hillo! what does this mean? Nothing very serious, I hope."
He pressed the thumb of one hand upon the small red knob of the
instrument, and with the other hand inserted the tube of it into his
ear.