History of the pearl hunger—Noted jewels of past—I go with Nohea to the
diving—Beautiful floor of the lagoon—Nohea dives many times—Escapes
shark narrowly—Descends 148 feet—No pearls reward us—Mandel tells of
culture pearls.
MUCH of the mystery and myth of these burning atolls was concerned with
the quest of pearls. In all the world those gems had been a subject of
romance, and legend had draped their search with a myriad marvels. Poets
and fictionists in many tongues had embroidered their gossamer fabric
with these exquisite lures, the ornament of beauty, the treasures of
queen and odalisque, _mondaine_ and dancer, image and shrine, since
humans began to adorn themselves with more delicate things than the
skins and teeth of animals. A thousand crimes had their seed in greed
for the possession of these sensuous sarcophagi of dead worms. A million
men had labored, fought, and died to hang them about the velvet throats
of the mistresses of the powerful. Hundreds of thousands had perished to
fetch them from the depths of the sea. History and novel were filled
with the struggle of princes and Cyprians, merchants, adventurers, and
thieves for ropes of pearls or single specimens of rarity. Krishna
discovered pearls in the ocean and presented them to his goddess
daughter. The Ethiopians all but worshiped them, and the Persians
believed them rain-drops that had entered the shells while the oysters
sunned themselves on the beach. Two thousand years before our era, a
millennium before Rome was even mud, the records of the Middle Kingdom
enumerated pearls as proper payments for taxes. When Alexander the Great
was conquering, the Chinese inventoried them as products of their
country. The “Url-Ja,” a Chinese dictionary of that date, says “they are
very precious.”
Solomon’s pearls came from the Persian Gulf, India, and Ceylon, and the
queen of Sheba’s too. Rivers of Britain gave the author of the
“Commentaries” pearls to dedicate to Venus Genetrix, and to present to
that lovely assassin who melted two, costing ten million sesterces, for
a love philter, and seduced two Cæsars. Who can forget the salad Philip
II of Spain, the uxorious inquisitor, set upon the royal table for his
wife, Elizabeth of Valois, the leaves of which were of emeralds, the
vinegar of rubies, the oil of topazes, and the salt of pearls? What more
appetizing dish for a royal bride? The Orientals make medicine of them
to-day, and I myself have seen a sultan burn pearls to make lime for
chewing with the betel-nut.
The New World offered fresh preserves to pearl-hunters; primeval grounds
drew a horde of lusty blades to harry the red men’s treasure-house.
South and Central America fed the pearl hunger that grew with the more
even distribution of wealth through commerce, and the rise of stout
merchants on the Continent and the British Islands. The Spanish king who
gave his name to the Philippines got from Venezuela a pearl that
balanced an eighth of a pound. I saw it in Madrid. These Paumotus and
Australasia were the last to answer yes to man’s ceaseless demand that
the earth and the waters thereof yield him more than bread for the sweat
of his brow. On many maps these atolls are yet inscribed as the Pearl
Islands. About their glorious lagoons was a mist of obscurity and of
wonder for centuries. Besides dangers to vessels, the cannibalism of
savages, the lack of any food except cocoanuts and fish, and stories of
strange happenings, there were accounts of divers who sank deeper in the
sea than science said was possible, and of priceless pearls plundered or
bought for a drinking-song.
Custom-houses and organized commerce had rung down the curtain on the
extravaganza of the past, but the romance of man wrestling with the
forces of nature in the element from which he originally came, now so
deadly to him, was yet a supreme attraction. The day of the opening of
the _rahui_ came none too soon for me. Nohea, my host, was to dive, and
we had arranged that I was to be in his canoe. I was assured by Mapuhi,
and by Captain Nimau and Kopcke, that despite the fact that his youth
was gone, Nohea was the best diver in Takaroa, and especially the
shrewdest judge of the worth of a piece of diving ground.
All the village went to the scene of the diving in a fleet of cutters
and canoes, sailing or paddling according to the goal and craft. Nohea
and I had a largish canoe, which, though with a small sail woven of
pandanus straw, could easily be paddled by us. He had staked out a spot
upon the lagoon that had no recognizable bearings for me, but which he
had long ago selected as his arena of action. He identified it by its
distance from certain points, and its association with the sun’s
position at a fixed hour.
We had risen before dawn to attend the Mormon church service initiating
the _rahui_. The rude coral temple was crowded when the young elders
from Utah began the service. Mapuhi, Nohea, and leaders of the village
sat on the forward benches. The prayer of elder Overton was for the
physical safety of the elected in the pursuit they were about to engage
in.
“Thou knowest, O God,” he supplicated, “that in the midst of life we are
in death.”
“_E! E! Parau mau!_” echoed the old divers, which is, “Yea, Verily!”
“These, thy children, O God, are about to go under the sea, but not like
the Chosen People in Israel, for whom the waters divided and let them go
dry-shod. But grant, O God, who didst send an angel to Joseph Smith to
show him the path to Thee through the Book of Mormon, who didst lead thy
new Chosen People through the deserts and over the mountains, among wild
beasts and the savages who knew Thee not, to Thy capital on earth, Salt
Lake City, that thy loving worshipers here assembled shall come safely
through this day, and that Thy sustaining hand shall support them in
those dark places where other wild beasts lie in wait for them!”
“_Parau mau!_” said all, and the eyes of some of the women were wet, for
they thought of sons and lovers, fathers and brothers, mothers and
sisters, who had gone out upon the lagoon, and who had died there among
the coral rocks, or of whom only pieces had been brought back. They sang
a song of parting, and of commending their bodies to the Master of the
universe, and then with many greetings and hearty laughter and a hundred
jests about expected good fortune, we parted to put the final touches on
the equipment for _la pêche des huitres nacrières_. Forgetting the
quarter of an hour of serious prayer and song in the temple, the natives
were now bubbling with eagerness for the hunt. Mapuhi himself was like a
child on the first day of vacation. These Paumotuans had an almost
perfect community spirit, for, while a man like Mapuhi became rich,
actually he made and conserved what the duller natives would have failed
to create from the resources about them, or to save from the clutches of
the acquisitive white, and he was ready to share with his fellows at any
time. He, as all other chiefs, was the choice of the men of the atoll at
a quadrennial election, and held office and power by their sufferance
and his own merits. None might go hungry or unhoused when others had
plenty. Civilization had not yet inflicted on them its worst
concomitants. They were too near to nature.
After a light breakfast of bread and savory fried fish, to which I added
jam and coffee for myself, Nohea and I pushed off for our
wonder-fishing. In the canoe we had, besides paddles, two _titea mata_,
the glass-bottomed boxes for seeing under the surface of the water, a
long rope, an iron-hooped net, a smaller net or bag of _coir_, twenty
inches deep and a foot across, with three-inch meshes, a bucket, a pair
of plain-glass spectacles for under-water use, a jar of drinking-water,
and food for later in the day.
The sun was already high in the unclouded sky when we lifted the mat
sail, and glided through the pale-blue pond, the shores of which were a
melting contrast of alabaster and viridescence. All about us were our
friends in their own craft, and the single motor-boat of the island,
Mapuhi’s, towed a score of cutters and canoes to their appointed places.
A slender breeze sufficed to set us, with a few tacks, at our exact
spot. We furled our sail, stowed it along the outrigger, and were ready
for the plunge. We did not anchor the canoe because of the profundity of
the water and because it is not the custom to do so. I sat with a paddle
in my hand for a few minutes but laid it down when Nohea picked up the
looking-glass. He put the unlidded box into the water and his head into
it and gazed intently for a few moments, moving the frame about to sweep
the bottom of the lagoon with his wise eyes.
The water was as smooth as a mirror. I saw the bed of the inland sea as
plainly as one does the floor of an aquarium a few feet deep. No streams
poured débris into it, nor did any alluvium cloud its crystal purity.
Coral and gravel alone were the base of its floor and sides, and the
result was a surpassing transparency of the water not believable by
comparison with any other lake.
“How far is that _toa aau_?” I asked, and pointed to a bank of coral.
Nohea sized up the object, took his head from the _titea mata_, and
replied, “Sixty feet.”
At that distance I could, unaided, see plainly a piece of coral as big
as my hand. The view was as variegated as the richest landscape—a
wilderness of vegetation, of magnificent marine verdure, sloping hills
and high towers with irregular windows, in which the sunshine streamed
in a rainbow of gorgeous colors; and the shells and bodies of scores of
zoöphytes dwelling upon the structures gleamed and glistened like jewels
in the flood of light. About these were patches of snow-white sand,
blinding in refracted brilliancy, and beside them green bushes or trees
of herbage-covered coral, all beautiful as a dream-garden of the Nereids
and as imaginary. Even when I withdrew my eyes from this fantastic
scene, the lagoon and shore were hardy less fabulous. The palms waved
along the beach as banners of seduction to a sense of sheer animism, of
investiture of their trunks and leaves with the spirits of the atoll.
Not seldom I had heard them call my name in the darkness, sometimes in
invitation to enchantment and again in warning against temptation. The
cutters or canoes of the village were like lily-pads upon the placid
water, far apart, white or brown, the voices of the people whispers in
the calm air. I wished I were a boy to know to the full the feeling of
adventure among such divine toys which had brought glad tears to my eyes
in my early wanderings.
The canoe had drifted, and Nohea slipped over its side and again spied
with the glass. I, too, looked through mine and saw where he indicated a
ridge or bank of coral upon which were several oyster-shells. Nohea
immediately climbed into the canoe and, resting upon the side prayed a
few moments, bowing his head and nodding as if in the temple. Then he
began to breathe heavily. For several minutes he made a great noise,
drawing in the air and expelling it forcibly, so that he seemed to be
wasting energy. I was almost convinced that he exaggerated the value of
his emotions and explosive sounds, but his impassive face and
remembrance of his race’s freedom from our exhibition conceit, drove the
foolish thought away. His chest, very capacious normally, was bursting
with stored air, a storage beyond that of our best trained athletes; and
without a word he went over the side and allowed his body to descend
through the water. He made no splash at all but sank as quietly as a
stone. I fastened my head in the _titea mata_ and watched his every
movement. He had about his waist a _pareu_ of calico, blue with large
white flowers,—the design of William Morris,—and a sharp sailor’s
sheath-knife at the belt. Around his neck was a sack of cocoanut-fiber,
and on his right hand a glove of common denim. Almost all his robust
brown body was naked for his return to the sea-slime whence his first
ancestor had once crawled.
Down he went through the pellucid liquid until at about ten feet the
resistance of the water stopped his course and, animated bubble as he
was, would have pushed him to the air again. But Nohea turned in a
flash, and with his feet uppermost struck out vigorously. He forced
himself down with astonishing speed and in twenty seconds was at his
goal. He caught hold of a gigantic goblet of coral and rested himself an
instant as he marked his object, the ledge of darker rocks on which grew
the shells. There were sharp-edged shapes and branching plant-like
forms, which, appearing soft as silk from above would wound him did he
graze them with his bare skin. He moved carefully about and finally
reached the shells. One he gripped with the gloved hand, for the shell,
too, had serrated edges, and, working it to and fro, he broke it loose
from its probable birthplace and thrust it into his sack. Immediately he
attacked the other, and as quickly detached it. He stooped down and
looked closely all about him. He then sprang up, put his arms over his
head, his palms pressed one on the other, and shot toward the surface. I
could see him coming toward me like a bolt from a catapult. I held a
paddle to move the canoe from his path if he should strike it, and to
meet him the trice he flashed into the ether.
The diver put his right arm over the outrigger boom, and opening his
mouth gulped the air as does the _bonito_ when first hauled from the
ocean. I was as still as death. In a séance once I was cautioned not to
speak during the materializations, as the disturbance might kill the
medium. I recalled that unearthly silence, for the moment of emergence
was the most fatal to the diver. His senses after the terrible pressure
of such a weight upon his body were as abnormal and acute as a man’s
whose nerves have been stripped by flaying. The change in a few seconds
from being laden and hemmed in by many tons of water to the lightness of
the atmosphere was ravaging. Slowly the air was respired, and gradually
his system,—heart, glands, lungs, and blood,—resumed its ordinary
rhythm, and his organs functioned as before his descent. Several minutes
passed before he raised his head from the outrigger, opened his eyes,
which were suffused with blood, and said in a low tone of the deaf
person, “_E tau Atua e!_” He was thanking his God for the gift of life
and health. He had been tried with Meshach, Shadrach, and Abednego,
though not by fire.
Nohea lifted himself into the canoe, and took the sack of _coir_ from
his neck. I removed the two pairs of shells with the reverence one might
assume in taking the new-born babe from its first cradle. They were Holy
Grails to me who had witnessed their wringing from the tie-ribs of
earth. They were shaped like a stemless palm-leaf fan, about eight
inches tall and ten wide, rough and black; and still adhering to their
base was a tangle of dark-green silky threads, the byssus or strong
filament which attaches them to their fulcrum, the ledge. It was the
byssus which Nohea had to wrench from the rock. I laid down the shells
and restored the sack to Nohea, who sat immobile, perhaps thoughtless.
Another brief space of time, and he smiled and clapped his hands.
“That was ten fathoms,” he said. “Paddle toward that clump of trees”
(they were a mile away), “and we will seek deeper water.”
A few score strokes and we were nearer the center of the lagoon. With my
bare eyes I could not make out the quality of the bottom but only its
general configuration. Nohea said the distance was twenty fathoms. The
looking-glass disclosed a long ledge with a flat shelf for a score of
feet, and he said he made out a number of large shells. It took the
acutest concentration on my part to find them, with his direction, for
his eyes were twice as keen as mine from a lifetime’s usage upon his
natural surroundings. We sacrificed our birthright of vivid senses to
artificial habits, lights, and the printed page. Nohea made ready to go
down, but changed slightly his method and equipment. He dropped the
iron-hooped net into the water by its line and allowed it to sink to the
ledge. Then he raised it a few feet so that it would swing clear of the
bottom.
“It will hold my shells and indicate to me exactly where the canoe is,”
he explained. “At this depth, 120 feet, I want to rest immediately on
reaching the surface, and not to have to swim to the canoe. I have not
dived for many months, and I am no longer young.”
He attached the line to the outrigger, and then, after a fervent prayer
to which I echoed a nervous amen, he began his breathing exercises.
Louder than before and more actively he expanded his lungs until they
held a maximum of stored oxygen, and then with a smile he slid through
the water until he reversed his body and swam. In his left hand now he
had a shell, a single side of a bivalve; and this he moved like an oar
or paddle, catching the water with greater force, and pulling himself
down with it and the stroke of the other arm, as well as a slight motion
of the feet. The entire movement was perfectly suited to his purpose,
and he made such rapid progress that he was beside the hoop-net in less
than a minute. He had a number of pairs of shells stripped from the
shelf and in the swinging net in a few seconds more, and then, drawn by
others he discerned further along the ledge, he swam, and dragged
himself by seizing the coral forms, and reached another bank. I paddled
the canoe gently behind him. I lost sight of him then completely. Either
he was hidden behind a huge stone obelisk or he had gone beyond my power
of sight.
A gigantic black shape swam into view near the oscillating hoop, and a
horror swept over me. It disappeared, but Nohea was still missing. The
time beat in my veins like a pendulum. Every throb seemed a second, and
they began to count themselves in my brain. How long was it since Nohea
had left me? A minute and a half? Two minutes? That is an age without
breathing. Something must have injured him. Slowly the moments struck
against my heart. I could not look through the _titea mata_ any longer.
Another sixty seconds and despair had chilled me so I shook in the hot
sunshine as with ague. I was cold and weak. Suddenly I felt a pull at
the rope, the canoe moved slightly, and hope grew warm in me. I
perceived an agitation of the water gradually ascending, and in a few
instants the diver sprang out of the lagoon to his waist. He threw his
arm over the outrigger, and bent down in agony. His suffering was
written in the contortion of his face, the blood in his eyes, and a
writhing of his whole body. He gasped madly at his first emergence, and
then his bosom rose and fell in lessening spasms. The cramp which had
convulsed his form relaxed, and, as minute after minute elapsed, his
face lost its rigidity, his pulse slackened to normal, and he said
feebly, “_E tau Atua e!_” With my assistance he hauled himself into the
canoe and lay half prone.
“You saw no shark?” I asked.
“I saw his shadow, but it was not he that detained me. I saw a bank
which might hold shells and I explored it. We will see what I have.”
We pulled up the hoop-net, and in it were thirteen pairs of shells.
These were larger than the others, older, and, as he said, from a more
advantageous place for feeding, so that their residents, being better
nourished had made larger and finer houses for themselves. Some of the
thirteen were eighteen inches across. He said that he had roamed seventy
feet on the bottom, and he had been down two and a half minutes. He had
made observation of the ledges all about and intended going a little
deeper. I had but to look at the rope of the net to gage the distance
for it was marked with knots and bits of colored cotton to give the
lengths like the marks on a lead-line on shipboard. I wanted to demur to
his more dangerous venture, but I did not. This was his avocation and
adventure, his war with the elements, and he must follow it and conquer
or fail.
Again he dived, and this time at 148 feet. This was almost the limit of
men in suits with air pumps or oxygen-tanks, and they were always let
down and brought up gradually, to accustom their blood to the altering
pressure. Half an hour or an hour was often consumed in hauling a diver
up from the depth from which Nohea sprang in a few seconds. His
transcendent courage and consummate skill were matched by his body’s
trained resistance to the effect of such extreme pressure of water and
the remaining without breathing for so long a time. I could appreciate
his achievements more than most people, for I had seen the divers of
many races at work in many waters. Ninety feet was the boundary of all
except the Paumotuans and those who used machines. But here was Nohea
exceeding that by sixty feet in my view, and I knew that greater depths
must be attained. Impelled by an instantaneous urge to contrast my own
capabilities with Nohea’s, I measured off thirty feet on the line, and,
putting it in his hands to hold, I breathed to my fullest and leaped
overboard. At three lengths of my figure, less than eighteen feet, I
experienced alarm and pain. I unloosed the hoop and it swayed down to
the end of the five fathoms of rope, while I kicked and pulled, and
after an interminable period I had barely touched it again before I
became convinced that if I did not breathe in another second I would
open my mouth. Nohea knew my plight, for he yanked at the rope, and with
his effort and my own frantic exertion I made the air, and humbly hugged
the outrigger until I was myself. Thirty feet! And Nohea had brought up
the shells from 148.
He paid dearly. Several times of the score that he probed the deeper
retreats of the oysters, he was prostrated for minutes upon his egress
and in throes of severe pain during the readjustment of pressure; but he
continued to pursue his fascinating and near-fatal employment until by
afternoon a heap of heavy, darkish bivalves lay in the canoe. My
curiosity had been heated since I had lifted the first shell, and it was
with increasing impatience that I waited for the milder but not less
interesting phase of his labor, the scrutiny of the interior of the
shells for pearls.
There are two moments in a divers life;
One, when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge;
Then, when, a prince, he rises with his pearl.
The poet visioned Nohea’s emotions, perhaps, but he had schooled himself
to postpone his satisfaction until the days harvest was gathered. When
we had paddled the canoe into shallow waters, and the sun was slanting
fast down the western side of earth, Nohea surrendered himself to the
realization or dissipation of his dream. He knew that a thousand shells
contain no pearls, that the princely state came to few in decades. But
the diver had the yearning and credulous mind of the gold prospector,
and lived in expectation as did he. The glint of a pebble, the sheen of
yellow sand, set his pulse to beating more rapidly; and so with the
diver. He knew that pearls of great value had been found many times, and
that one such trove might make him rich for life, independent of daily
toil, and free of the traps and pangs of the plunge.
Nohea thrust his knife between the blades of a bivalve and pried open
his resisting jaws. True pearls lie in the tissues of the oyster,
generally in the rear of the body and sealed in a pocket. Nohea laid
down the parted shell and seized the animal, and dissected his boneless
substance in a gesture of eager inquiry. I watched his actions with as
sharp response, and sighed as each oyster in turn was thrown into the
bucket, in which was sea-water. When all had been submitted to the test
and no pearl had flashed upon our hopeful eyes we examined the shells,
trusting that though the true pearls had escaped us we might find
blisters, those which, having a point of contact with the shell, are
thus not perfect in shape and skin, but have a flaw. These often have
large value, if they can be skinned to advantage; and the diver put his
smaller hopes upon them.
With pearls, orient or blister, eliminated, the primary and actually
more important basis of the industry appealed to Nohea. He estimated the
weight and value of the shells, which would be transported to London for
manufacture in the French Department of the Oise into the black pearl
buttons that ornament women’s dresses. These Paumotuan shells were
celebrated for their black borders, _nacre á bord noir_, more valuable
than the gold-lipped product of the Philippines, but a third cheaper
than the silver-lipped shells of Australia. With at least the comfort of
a heavy catch of this less remunerative though hardly less beautiful
creation of the oyster, Nohea pointed out to me that the formation of
the mother-of-pearl or nacre on the shells was from left to right, as if
the oyster were right minded.
“When the whorls of a shell are from right to left,” he said, “that
shell is valuable as a curiosity. The people of Asia, the Chinese, pay
well for it, and a Chinese shell-buyer now here told me that in Initia
[India] they weighed it with gold in old times. In China they keep such
shells in the temples to hold the sacred oil, and the priests administer
magic medicine in them.”
Nohea completed the round of the day’s undertaking by macerating the
oysters and throwing them into the lagoon that their spawn might be
released for another generation. He cut off and threaded the adhesive
muscle of the oyster, the _tatari ioro_, to eat when dried. It was
something like the scallop or abalone abductor muscle sold in our
markets. The shells would be put into the sheds or warehouses to dry and
to be beaten and rubbed so as to reduce the bulk of their backs, which
have no value but weigh heavily.
After we had supped, Nohea and the older divers gathered at Mapuhi’s for
a discussion of the day’s luck, and I went along to the coterie of
traders by Lying Bill’s firm’s store. A cocoanut-husk fire was burning,
and about it sat Bill, McHenry, Llewellyn, Nimau, Mandel, Kopcke, and
others. Mandel was the most notable pearl-buyer and expert here, with an
office in Paris and a warehouse in Papeete. He was huge and with gross
features, and was rated as the richest man in these South Seas. His own
schooner had dropped anchor off Takaroa a few days before with Mrs.
Mandel in command. He might make the bargain for pearls, but she would
do the paying and squeeze the most out of the price to the native. She
ruled with no soft hand, and in her long life had solved many difficult
problems in money-grubbing in this archipelago. Her husband was the head
of the Mandel tribe, but sons and daughter all knew the dancing boards
of the schooner and the intricacies of the pearl-market. Usually Mandel
stayed in Tahiti or visited Paris, but the _rahui_ in Takaroa was too
promising a prize for any of them to remain away, and all of the family
were diligent in intrigue and negotiation. Mandel had handled the finest
pearls of the Paumotus for many years. I had seen Mrs. Mandel come
ashore, in a sheeny yellow Mother-Hubbard or Tahitian _ahu vahine_ and a
cork helmet; but she made her home on her schooner, to which she invited
those from whom her good man had purchased shell or pearls.
Pearls were, of course, the subject of the talk about the fire. Toae, a
Hikueru man, had found one, and Mandel had it already. He showed it to
me, a pea-shaped, dusky object, with no striking beauty.
“I may be mistaken,” said Mandel, “but I believe this outside layer is
poorer than one inside. In Paris my employees will peel it and see. It
is taking a chance, but we have a second sight about it. You know a
pearl is like an onion, with successive skins, and we take off a number
sometimes. It reduces the size but may increase the luster. Also we are
using the ultra-violet ray to improve color. I saw a pearl that cost a
hundred thousand francs sold for three hundred thousand after the ray
was used on it. You know a pearl is produced only by a sick oyster. It
is a pathological product like gall-stones, and it is mostly caused by a
tapeworm getting into the oyster’s shell, though a grain of sand is
often the nucleus. The oyster feels the grating or irritating thing and
secretes nacre to cover it. The tapeworm is embalmed in this
mother-of-pearl, and the sand smoothed with it. The material, the nacre,
is the same as the interior of the shell, and the oyster seems not to
stop covering the intruder when the itching has stopped but keeps on out
of habit. And so forms small and big pearls. Now a blister is generally
over a bug or snail, though sometimes it is a stop-gap to keep out a
borer who is drilling through the shell from the outside. The blisters
are usually hollow, whereas a pearl has a yellow center with the
carbonate of lime in concentric prisms. An orient or true pearl is
formed in the muscles of the oyster and does not touch the shell; but
the blister, which generally is part of the shell, may have been started
in the oyster’s sac or folds, and have dropped out or been released to
hold between the oyster and the shell. With these we cut away the
outside down to the original pearl. A blister itself is only good for a
brooch or an ornament, but I have gotten five or ten thousand francs for
the best.”
Captain Nimau, who was only less clever than Mandel in the lore of
pearls, said that, as the lagoons were often three hundred feet or
deeper in places, it was probable that larger pearls than ever yet
brought up were in these untouched caches.
“The Paumotuan has descended 180 feet,” said Nimau. “I have plumbed his
dive. A diver with a suit cannot go any deeper, and so we never have
explored the possible beds ’way down. The whole face of the outer reef
may be a vast oyster-bed, but the surf prevents us from investigating. I
have seen in December and March of many years millions of baby oysters
floating into the lagoons with the rising tide, to remain there. They
never go out again but prefer the quiet life where they can grow up
strong and big. The singular thing about these pearl-oysters is that
they can move about. When you try to break them loose from the ledge
they prove to be very firmly attached by their byssus, but they travel
from one shelf to another when they need a change of food. It is not
sand they are most afraid of. They can spit their nacre on it if it gets
in their shells; but it is the little red crab that bothers them most.
You know how often you find the crab living happily in the pearl-shell
because when the oyster feeds he gets his share, and he is too active
for the oyster to kill as it does the worm, by spitting its nacre on him
and entombing him. Some day divers in improved suits will search for the
thousands of pearls that have fallen upon the bottom from dead oysters,
and maybe make millions. _Mais, après tout_, pearls may soon have little
value, for they say that the Japanese and other people are growing them
like mushrooms, and, though they have not yet perfected the orient or
true pearl, they may some day. One man, some kind of foreigner, who used
to be around here, discovered the secret, but it’s lost now.”
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