We caught the south-east Trade winds the next day, very light at first,
but gradually freshening as we ran farther into them; and then, as soon
as we found ourselves fairly in the grip of the true breeze, with the
water rippling blue and crisply all about us, we got the schooner under
canvas once more, hoisted our "fins" inboard, and bore away upon a
nor'-west course, with starboard studdingsails and big gaff-topsail set
and dragging like a team of cart horses. A week of this sort of thing
carried us to the calm belt under the Line; and here we once more
brought our "fins" into action, using them for three whole days and a
trifle over before we touched the southernmost fringe of the north-east
Trades, when we again went bowling along under all plain sail, that
being as much as we could conveniently show to a beam wind. Finally, on
a certain morning immediately after breakfast, I climbed to the
topgallant yard, armed with Cunningham's telescope, which I had borrowed
for the occasion, and, looking straight ahead, saw--just where I had
expected to see it, namely, some fifteen miles beyond our jibboom end--a
patch of white water, some three miles in length, stretching north and
south right athwart the schooner's hawse. It was the coral reef upon
which, if the skipper's friend Abe Johnson had spoken truth, that worthy
had suffered shipwreck, followed by all the horrors of complete solitude
for five solid months; and some two miles beyond which lay--according to
Abe--the rich pearl-oyster bed that was the real object of the _Martha
Brown's_ visit to this lonesome spot in the heart of the Pacific.
"See anything, Mr Temple?" hailed the skipper from the quarterdeck, in
a voice tense with excitement.
"Ay, ay, sir," I replied. "It is there, right enough, as plain as mud
in a wine-glass, about fifteen miles off, and stretching right athwart
our hawse. You had better luff a point, sir, and go round its northern
extremity."
"Luff a p'int it is," answered the skipper, directing the helmsman.
Then, as the schooner came to her new course, "How's that, Mr Temple?"
"Excellent, sir," I replied; "we shall just nicely clear the northern
end of the reef if she is kept at that."
"D'ye see anything else besides the reef, Mr Temple?" asked the
skipper,--"anything, I mean, in the shape of another schooner, for
instance?"
"Nothing at all, sir," I answered.
"That's all right, then," answered the skipper in a tone of exuberant
satisfaction. "I guess you don't need to stay up there no longer, do
ye?"
I slung the telescope round my neck by its strap, and then, swinging off
the yard, slid down to the deck hand over hand by way of the topgallant
backstay, walking aft and joining the skipper and Cunningham as soon as
my feet touched the planks.
"So the reefs there, all right, is it?" remarked Brown, as I joined the
pair and returned the telescope with thanks to its lawful owner. "There
ain't no chance of a mistake, I s'pose?"
"No chance at all," I replied confidently. "It is there as plain as the
nose on one's face. If you remember, I told you yesterday that,
provided the breeze held, we should be at anchor in the lagoon by noon
to-day; and so we shall."
"Ay, ay," answered Brown. "I remember your sayin' so. And I didn't
doubt your word, not for a second, for you're an A1 navigator, and no
mistake. Never knowed a better. But I was just a little bit afeard
that Abe might ha' been playin' it on me, or else that his riggers might
ha' got a bit mixed. But I reckon it's a square deal, since you say
that the reefs there. What do it look like?"
"From aloft it presents the precise appearance that you described to
me," I said. "A bare reef, almost awash, with not a thing upon it,
except a few birds which I could just make out circling in the air above
it."
"Ay, that'll be it, sure enough," agreed Brown. "I remember Abe
speakin' about them birds. Their eggs, some clams that he knocked off
the rocks, and a fish or two that he managed to catch later on was all
that the pore feller had to eat for five everlastin' months--and raw at
that."
It was just five bells when we weathered the northern extremity of the
reef and bore away to look for the entrance to the lagoon. I was then
aloft again, for the sake of the more extended view obtainable from the
height of the topgallant yard; and as we swept past the reef, and I
looked down upon it, I thought I had never seen a more ghastly place for
a solitary human being to be cast away upon. It was composed,
apparently, of nothing but coral, upon which the everlasting surf was
gradually casting up a deposit of sand, which, when dry, the wind was as
gradually distributing over its surface. Here and there I observed dark
patches which I took to be seaweed, partly buried in the sand; and there
was a tolerably well defined tide-mark, consisting apparently of more
seaweed, and flotsam of various kinds cast up by the surf.
But the most remarkable thing about the island was the multitude of
birds, gulls principally. There were thousands of them in the air about
the reef, and many more thousands of them sitting on the reef itself.
The time was no doubt coming when the guano of these birds, their dead
bodies, and the refuse of their food, mingling and agglomerating with
the sand and rotting seaweed, would form an extraordinarily rich soil,
upon which a few coconuts, drifting across the illimitable ocean, would
be cast up by the surf, and, becoming buried, would sprout, throw out
roots and shoots, and become trees, as has happened in the case of so
many others of the Pacific islands. But at that moment there was not a
green thing upon it.
The atoll, as a whole, was almost perfectly circular in shape, having a
diameter of about four miles; and for purposes of description it may be
spoken of as consisting of three parts, namely, the island, the lagoon,
and the encircling reef. The island, which, being dry, was of course
the highest part of the atoll, measured about three and a quarter miles
long, and was crescent-shaped, being about three-eighths of a mile wide
in the middle, tapering off north and south in the form of the cusps of
the crescent moon; and from the extremities of the two cusps there swept
away the encircling reef which enclosed the lagoon in a very perfect
natural breakwater, having the inevitable opening as nearly as might be
in its middle, just opposite the widest part of the island. But
although I have spoken of the island as being the highest part, it must
not be supposed that even this rose any considerable height above the
level of the ocean, its highest point, as we subsequently ascertained,
being only a bare six feet above the water's surface.
I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the passage through the
reef almost immediately after going aloft; we therefore had no
difficulty in hitting it off, and, conning the schooner from the
crosstrees, I took her through without a hitch, our anchor plunging into
the placid waters of the lagoon a few minutes after the skipper had
struck six bells.
"Well, gents," Brown remarked, rubbing his hands, as, having been
forward to supervise the mooring of the ship in my absence aloft, he
came aft and joined Cunningham and myself, while the crew took to the
rigging and went aloft to furl the canvas, "here we are at last; and
ne'er a sign of the _Kingfisher_ anywhere about. Did ye happen to
notice anything at all like a h'yster bank anywhere near while you was
aloft, Mr Temple?"
"Yes, sir, I did," answered I. "I took a good look round while we were
coming in, and I noticed a distinct discoloration of the water about a
mile out, as dead to leeward of the island as it can possibly be. I
have no doubt we shall find that to be the shoal of which your friend
spoke. And there was another thing I noticed while I was aloft, and
which I will take this opportunity of mentioning. The island is
literally covered with birds, sir, and, unfortunate as is the necessity,
I am afraid that our very first task must be to kill every one of them."
"Kill off them birds, Mr Temple?" echoed the skipper, in a tone of
mingled surprise and indignation. "Why, what harm are they adoin'?"
"None at all at present, sir. But--by the way, how do you propose to
obtain the pearls which you hope to procure from the oysters in yonder
bed?"
"Well," answered the skipper, "I had it in my mind to take the schooner
out to the bed every mornin' and anchor her right on top of it. Then I
thought of lowerin' the boats, and, as the oysters comes up, dischargin'
'em into the boats, one boat at a time, until we've got a fair cargo,
a'ter which that boat'll be sent ashore in charge of, say, two men; and
Number 2 boat'll be loadin' while Number 1 is goin' ashore and comin'
back. And when the oysters is took ashore, my plan is to spread 'em out
on the island and let 'em rot in the sun, an'--ah yes! now I see what
you means about them blamed birds. They'll just go for them rottin'
oysters an' play the very Ole Gooseberry with 'em--is that what you
mean?"
"Precisely," I said. "They will attack the decaying oysters, and you
will probably lose about three-fourths of your pearls."
"Ay, I see; I see," murmured the "Old Man". "It seems a most tarnation
pity," he continued regretfully, "but I guess we'll have to do it--or
lose most o' them pearls."
"It will be an endless job, too--to say nothing of the pity of it--to
kill off all those thousands of birds," remarked Cunningham. "But
perhaps, after all, it may not be necessary to resort to such extreme
measures as that. Have you any firearms on board, Captain?"
"You bet I have, and ammunition too," answered the skipper, with a grin.
"You don't catch old Eph Brown venturin' his property on an expedition
like this here--among savages, too, when we gets away down among the
islands a'ter that there sandalwood--without bringin' along the means to
defend it. I got a dozen muskets and six shot guns down below; and I
reckon I can get the lot out in ten minutes."
"Then," said Cunningham, "I'll tell you what we will do, Captain, if you
are agreeable. Let Temple and me have a couple of those shot guns, with
a moderate quantity of ammunition, and we will go ashore and shoot a
sufficient number of those birds to make them thoroughly afraid of
anything resembling the human figure. Then, when we have done that, we
will rig up a scarecrow on the leeward extremity of the island, where I
suppose you will deposit your oysters to undergo the process of decay,
and see how that acts before we attempt anything in the nature of actual
wholesale slaughter."
"Yes," assented the skipper eagerly, "I guess that plan's well worth
tryin', and I'm much obliged to ye for thinkin' of it. I don't want the
death of any more o' them birds laid to my door than what there's
actooal need for, for they're purty creeturs, and, when all's said and
done, God made 'em, same's He made you and me. But I'm afeard that a
few of 'em'll have to die, so the job might as well be done at once.
I'll go down below and get them shot guns, and you and Mr Temple might
as well go ashore directly after dinner."
Accordingly, as soon as our midday dinner was over, the gig--our gig--
was hoisted out, and Cunningham and I, with two hands for a crew, and
with a shot gun each, together with a double pocketful of cartridges,
went ashore to perform the exceedingly unpleasant but necessary task of
frightening the birds so effectually that they would not be likely to
interfere to any very great extent with our pearling operations. At the
last moment, just before shoving off from the schooner's side,
Cunningham shouted to the cook to pass down into the boat the biggest
basket that he could find, and this the "Doctor" did, with the result
that when we landed on the island we carried with us a basket capable of
holding quite one hundred gulls' eggs.
We had already decided that the southern extremity of the island was the
proper place upon which to deposit our oysters, when obtained, because
by placing them there the exceedingly offensive odour which would be
generated by the process of decay would be carried away by the wind over
the open sea, while by anchoring the schooner as far to windward as
possible we might hope to escape in a very great measure, if not
altogether, the annoyance of the smell; therefore, upon landing, we
started operations at the south end of the island by driving the birds
away from there.
But our task was by no means so easy as we had anticipated; for so
extraordinarily tame were the birds that they positively refused to rise
at our approach, actually permitting themselves to be caught and their
necks to be wrung rather than take the trouble to get out of our way.
Certainly they resisted actual capture most vigorously, fighting us with
beak and wing, and many a sharp peck and severe blow did we receive
within the first ten minutes of our operations; but they would not take
to flight, or make the slightest attempt of any kind to avoid us.
Consequently at length, and very much against our will, we were obliged
to open fire upon them, and it was not until the creatures saw the
struggles and heard the piteous cries of the wounded among them that
they at length began to grasp the fact that we were enemies, and
dangerous. And even then it was not until we had killed some three
hundred of them that they seemed to have fully learned their lesson, and
took to flight at our approach. While this wretched work of slaughter
was proceeding the two men with the basket followed in our footsteps and
collected the eggs from the abandoned nests, choosing the cleanest as
being most likely to be fresh; so that, upon our return to the schooner
that night, the cook got to work, and all hands supped sumptuously upon
boiled and fried gulls' eggs, while we in the cabin regaled ourselves
upon savoury omelette, followed by pancakes.
After supper Cunningham and I, with an old, discarded suit of clothes
belonging to the skipper, rigged up a most realistic scarecrow, ready
for transportation to the shore the first thing next morning.
We were all astir at daybreak next day; and while the hands, under the
skipper's supervision, hoisted out the longboat and jollyboat and passed
them astern ready for towing, and then proceeded to wash down the decks,
Cunningham and I took the gig, and, carefully depositing our scarecrow
in the sternsheets, pulled ashore and set up the figure, the birds
taking to the air with loud, plaintive cries the moment that we stepped
ashore. Then, having set up the figure, which represented a man
carrying a gun, we returned to the schooner, observing with
satisfaction, as we did so, that the birds seemed indisposed to settle
again, but, after wheeling in the air over the island for some time,
winged their way out to sea.
By the time that we got back to the schooner breakfast was ready, and
all hands were at once piped to the meal, regardless of the hour, the
word at the same time being passed that everybody would be expected on
deck again within twenty minutes. But no such warning was needed, for
the forecastle hands by this time knew as well as the afterguard what we
had come to this lonesome spot for, and were as eager as ourselves not
only to see how the adventure would "pan out"--to use their own
expression--but also to gain the utmost possible advantage over the
_Kingfisher_ and her people, whom they regarded as would-be lawless
poachers upon our own private property; therefore when we of the cabin
returned to the deck after a hasty meal, which we had bolted in less
than a quarter of an hour, all hands were on deck, ready and waiting for
orders. Accordingly no sooner did the skipper poke his head out of the
companion and bellow the order to loose all fore-and-aft canvas than the
group on the forecastle split itself up into sections, one section
actually running aft to cast loose the mainsail, while a second attacked
the foresail, a third laid out to loose the jibs, and the fourth and
last proceeded to fix the levers of the patent windlass and to heave in
the slack of the cable.
A quarter of an hour sufficed us to get the canvas set and the anchor
broken out of the sand; and then, as the schooner paid off and filled,
Cunningham proceeded to get his diving gear on deck and to make ready
for the great experiment, while I sprang into the fore rigging and made
my way aloft to the topsail-yard, from which to con the schooner out
through the reef in the first place, and afterwards to look out for the
oyster bed. We could not possibly have had a finer day for the
beginning of our operations, for the sky was a clear, rich, deep blue,
dappled here and there at intervals with small patches of Trade-cloud,
which looked like bits of cotton wool, drifting solemnly athwart the
azure, while the Trade wind was blowing very moderately, and there was
no sea to speak of.
I had scarcely got myself comfortably settled upon the topsail-yard when
the skipper hailed me from where he stood aft close alongside the
helmsman.
"Tawps'l-yard, there!" he shouted. "I s'pose you don't happen to see
nothin' of that there blamed _Kingfisher_ anywhere about, do ye, Mr
Temple?"
I sent my gaze slowly and searchingly right round the entire rim of the
horizon. The air was so crystal-clear that no glass was needed to aid
the eye. Had there been as much as three or four feet of a
royal-masthead showing above the horizon I could not have failed to
detect it, but there was nothing; the horizon was absolutely bare in
every direction, and I so reported it. The skipper waved his hand by
way of reply, and I forthwith turned my attention to the business in
hand, which was that of conning the schooner through the passage in the
reef.
Twenty minutes later we were outside, rising and falling easily upon the
long Pacific swell; and the moment that it was prudent for us to do so
we starboarded our helm a trifle and kept away for the slightly
discoloured patch of water that seemed to mark the position of the shoal
upon which we expected to find the boundless wealth of the extensive bed
of pearl-oysters spoken of by the departed Abe. Ten minutes sufficed us
to run down to it, and the moment that we reached it I saw that we had
not come upon a wild-goose chase. The oysters were there, all right,
thousands, millions of them, showing up as a light-brown patch, nearly
ten acres in extent, clearly distinguishable through the crystal-clear
water. I allowed the schooner to run to about the very centre of the
patch, and then shouted for the anchor to be let go.
Meanwhile all halyards had been let run two or three minutes earlier,
and the canvas was rolled up anyhow, everybody, from the skipper to the
cabin boy, seeming to be suddenly seized with a perfect delirium of
excitement. As for me, I went down on deck by way of the backstays, and
at once proceeded to lend Cunningham a hand to get into his makeshift
diving rig, which he was very carefully overhauling. And while this was
doing, four of the hands came along with a twenty-five-foot ladder,
heavily weighted at the bottom with pigs of iron ballast, which
Cunningham had caused to be constructed; and this they launched over the
side, allowing it to hang plumb up and down, well secured, just abaft
the main rigging. This was for Cunningham to descend by; and upon
looking over the side I saw that it reached to within about four feet of
the surface of the oyster bed. The getting of Cunningham into his suit,
and the arranging of all the preliminaries, such as the rigging of a
derrick wherewith to hoist to the surface the nets of oysters after
Cunningham had filled them, the hauling of the longboat alongside to
receive the first load, and so on, kept us busy for a full half-hour,
during which the skipper paced to and fro, urging us to hurry, and
gnawing his finger nails to the quick in his excitement and impatience.
But at length everything was ready, even to the shovel which Cunningham
was to use for shovelling the oysters into the nets; and with the upper
end of the air hose securely made fast to the main rigging, close to
where I stood with the signal line coiled in my hands ready for paying
out, and with a stout sword bayonet girt about his waist as a defence
against the possible attack of prowling sharks, the amateur diver was
assisted to climb the rail and get his feet upon the topmost rung of the
ladder, after which he was left to his own devices. We had taken the
precaution to send a good man aloft in a boatswain's chair, bent to the
end of the gaff-topsail halyards, to keep a lookout for sharks, and he
had reported none in sight; we therefore hoped that we should not suffer
any very serious interruption from them, and Cunningham went over the
side with the utmost confidence, I keeping my eye on him as he
cautiously descended the ladder rung by rung, and paying out the signal
line in such a manner as always to maintain a very light strain upon it.
At length I saw him step off the bottom rung of the ladder and gingerly
lower himself to the surface of the oyster bed, having reached which he
gave a single tug of his signal line to indicate that he was all right.
Then, after pausing for a moment, apparently to take a good look round,
he cast off the shovel from the end of the line by which it had been
lowered, and proceeded methodically to shovel the oysters, just as they
came, into one of the nets, which had also been lowered within his
reach. Ten minutes of steady work now ensued, at the end of which he
gave the signal to hoist away, and up came our first spoils, probably
about five hundred oysters, which were swung over the longboat and
emptied into her, the second net having meanwhile been lowered down to
the diver.
And now there occurred a somewhat diverting episode; for no sooner was
the first net-load of oysters discharged into the longboat than the
skipper, unable any longer to endure the suspense, scrambled over the
side, armed with a formidable jack knife, and, leaping down into the
boat, seized an oyster and proceeded to force it open with the blade of
his knife, no doubt fully expecting to find at least one pearl of price
in it. But, alas! the poor man was doomed to disappointment, for there
was no sign or vestige of pearl in the fish, save the lovely iridescent
lining of the two shells. A second attempt fared no better, and the
disappointed seeker flung the shells far from him with a muttered
something that sounded not unlike an imprecation. But the good man was
not to be so easily put off. A third oyster was seized and savagely
wrenched open, and this time three diminutive seed pearls rewarded his
perseverance. Yet still he was not satisfied. A fourth oyster was
opened, and proved a blank; a fifth was seized, and as the two shells
were forced apart a magnificent pearl was revealed, together with some
six or eight much smaller ones. A shout of triumph apprised us all of
the fact that at last the search had proved successful; and the next
moment up came the skipper, his face aflame with delight and excitement,
to show all and sundry what a pearl looked like when fresh taken from
the parent fish.
Meanwhile the process of filling, hoisting, and emptying the nets went
steadily on for the best part of an hour, and then Cunningham signalled
that he was coming to the surface, some three thousand oysters having by
that time been secured. When Cunningham presently appeared, and the
glass of his helmet was unscrewed, he informed us that his makeshift
suit was perfectly watertight, and answered its purpose even better than
he had dared to expect, and that he had come up simply because he felt
fatigued with his unaccustomed work and needed a little rest. The
skipper thought this a good opportunity to change boats, so he sent away
the longboat with her load in charge of a couple of men, giving them
instructions how to dispose of the oysters; and the gig was hauled up
alongside in her place. Then the boatswain, who had all along
manifested the utmost interest in the diving question, volunteered to
change places with Cunningham and do a spell of shovelling: but the
engineer explained that he could take another turn below quite easily,
and proposed, as an amendment, that the boatswain should take on the
afternoon shift; and, this being arranged, he again descended and
resumed operations.
Then in due course there came a brief respite while everybody went to
dinner, half an hour being allowed for the meal, at the expiration of
which time operations went on uninterruptedly until about half an hour
before sunset, when we were perforce obliged to cease work, in order to
get the schooner back into the lagoon before nightfall. But we had done
not at all badly; for I had kept a rough--a very rough--account of the
number of oysters that had been brought to the surface that day, not
counting them, of course, but just estimating the number that had come
up in each net, and when I came to total up I found that, unless my
calculations were a long way out, we must have secured at least
twenty-five thousand oysters as a reward for our day's work.
But this by no means ended with the mooring of the schooner in the
lagoon, for when that was done there still remained the oysters to be
laid out in rows upon the southern extremity of the island; and we soon
found that the landing and laying of them out was a much more lengthy
process than the getting of them up from the sea bottom. Very
fortunately for us, we had arrived at the island when the moon was four
days old, and in that exquisitely clear atmosphere a moon of even that
age affords a very useful amount of light, of which we availed ourselves
to empty the boats and make all ready for the next day before finally
knocking-off work.
The next day was, with a rather notable exception, just a repetition of
the day which had preceded it. The weather was as fine, and matters
worked even more smoothly, for almost every hour revealed to us some
little improvement that might be made in our methods of work, which we
promptly adopted. Thus, for example, the boatswain having proved
himself to be quite an expert diver, it was arranged that Cunningham and
he should work spell and spell about, each man working two hours and
then taking two hours' complete rest. On this, our second day upon the
bank, Cunningham and the boatswain had each been down once, the dinner
hour had arrived and passed, and Cunningham was down again, working with
tremendous energy--for a friendly rivalry had already arisen between him
and the boatswain as to who could send up the most oysters--while I
stood in the main chains, tending the signal line and intently watching
the toiling figure diligently shovelling oysters away down below in the
cool green shadow of the schooner's hull. As on the previous day, we
had a man aloft for the express purpose of keeping a lookout for sharks,
but every time we hailed him his reply was that there were no sharks in
sight.
Suddenly, as I stood watching Cunningham, a great greyish-brown object
slid lazily along beneath me, and paused immediately above the toiling
diver. A single glance sufficed me to identify it as a shark, full
twenty feet in length; and I instantly sent down the pre-arranged danger
signal, while the man at the masthead yelled: "Shark ho! right over the
diver!" I sang out to the two men who were in the boat receiving the
oysters as they came up to seize a couple of oars and violently splash
the surface of the water with them, in the hope that the sound would
drive the brute away--for, after all, the shark, voracious as it is, is
a timid creature, easily frightened by any sudden or unaccustomed noise.
And the attempt met with at least partial success, for the shark
instantly darted away a few yards; but it as suddenly turned, and,
apparently quite undismayed by the splashing, slowly came back.
Meanwhile, however, Cunningham had dropped his shovel, and, having drawn
the sword bayonet with which he was armed, stood quite quietly on the
defensive, alertly on the watch. Evidently the shark did not quite know
what to make of the strange creature on the sea bottom, for he now began
to swim rapidly to and fro, making short tacks each way of a few yards
only, eyeing Cunningham intently all the while. Then, before we could
do anything in the nature of intervention, the brute suddenly wheeled
and made a dash straight for the engineer. So lightning swift was the
onslaught that the only thing I distinctly saw was the quick whisk of
the creature's tail as it turned, and the sudden dart of the great body,
followed by an equally sudden writhing movement; then in an instant the
great fish appeared to be enveloped in a cloud of red, in which it
almost disappeared; and the next thing I distinctly realised was that it
was gone, while, the red cloud slowly dissipating, Cunningham was
presently revealed in the very act of recovering his shovel for the
purpose of resuming work. I signalled to him to come up at once, but he
replied with a vigorous negative, and the next moment he was hard at
work again.
A minute or two later the man aloft hailed: "I guess Mr Cunningham have
give that there shark his gruel; for there he is, away out there on the
starboard quarter, in his dyin' flurry!" And, sure enough, there the
brute was, on the surface, about a hundred and fifty yards away,
twisting and splashing in the midst of a boil of pink foam; and a few
minutes later the struggles ceased altogether, and the monster floated
quiescent and awash, dead, one of its great pectoral fins and a narrow
strip of its white belly just showing above the surface. I was terribly
afraid that the smell of blood, and of the dead carcass, would attract
other sharks to the neighbourhood, and so further imperil Cunningham's
safety--for sharks are reputed to possess an extraordinarily keen scent;
but nothing of the kind happened. The dead shark slowly drifted away
and was finally lost sight of, and we finished our day's work without
further interruption.
Thus matters went steadily on for a fortnight, by which time we had
accumulated some three hundred and eighty thousand oysters, and had laid
them out upon the island to undergo the process of decay in the
scorching rays of the sun. And that they were undergoing that process
at a very rapid rate our olfactory nerves soon informed us; for the
odour of them became perceptible as early as the fourth day, while by
the end of the fortnight it was so strong as to be scarcely endurable
even on the oyster bank itself, which was about a mile to leeward of the
island, although, by berthing the schooner every night right up in the
weather corner of the lagoon, we managed to avoid getting more than an
occasional whiff of it during the hours devoted to rest.
By the end of the fortnight, however, we discovered that even the
accumulation of wealth by scooping up pearl-oysters from the bottom of
the sea may become monotonous after a while, especially when the
accumulation is for somebody else's benefit; therefore, with one accord,
we petitioned "Old Man" Brown to give us a change of occupation by
allowing us to amuse ourselves searching for pearls among the rotting
fish, which now covered a considerable portion of the leeward half of
the island. And Brown gladly jumped at the proposal; for he was every
day growing more anxious lest the _Kingfisher_ and her crew of "toughs"
should heave in sight and become troublesome, and was more than willing
to make sure of such spoil as we had already accumulated. Therefore, on
a certain morning, instead of getting the schooner under way and
proceeding to the oyster bank, as usual, the longboat was hauled
alongside, and, attired in our very oldest clothes, armed with a ship's
bucket each, and provided with a plentiful supply of disinfectant cloths
to fasten over our mouths and nostrils upon reaching the field of
action, all hands of us, except the cook and the cabin boy, got into her
and pulled away for the shore.
The air was literally darkened by the immense numbers of birds that had
returned to the island, attracted by the odour, after having been driven
off, and we soon saw that a few of the bolder of them had summoned up
courage to settle among our oysters, despite the scarecrow which we had
set up; but they took to flight immediately upon our approach, and
hovered over us all day, uttering their melancholy cries with such
persistency, and creating such a volume of sound, that we could scarcely
hear our own voices.
However, we were there not to talk but to work. Upon stepping ashore
the first thing we did, after securing the boat, was to fill our buckets
with clean salt water, in which to wash and deposit any pearls that we
might find; next we swathed our mouths and nostrils with the
disinfecting cloths; and then, told off by the skipper, each of us took
a row of the decaying fish and proceeded to search carefully the putrid
matter for what many people regard as the most lovely gems in the world.
There is no need for me to dilate upon the disagreeable, not to say
disgusting nature of the task upon which we now found ourselves engaged;
it may safely be left to the imagination of the reader, and I will
content myself with merely placing upon record the fact that it was
infinitely worse than even Cunningham or I had anticipated--and we
believed that we had gauged the objectionable character of the work
pretty accurately. But, so far at least as I was concerned, I soon
forgot the sickeningly offensive nature of my work in the interest
attaching to it, for I had not been five minutes engaged upon it when I
came upon a most superb pearl, perfectly globular in shape, with the
exquisite sheeny lustre peculiar to gems of what are termed the first
water, and, as nearly as might be, an inch in diameter. Such a find as
this was more than enough to make me forget all the disagreeableness of
the work upon which I was engaged, and to stimulate my curiosity to its
highest pitch. Accordingly I proceeded with zest, and within an hour
had secured a round dozen of good-sized pearls--although none of them
approached the first in size--together with a sufficient quantity of
smaller pearls to fill about one-third of an ordinary half-pint tumbler.
Nor was this first hour of mine an exceptionally fortunate one, for
when we knocked off work at the end of the day my total find amounted to
no less than one hundred and seven pearls, ranging in size from half an
inch in diameter up to a monster that measured just over an inch and a
quarter, while of smaller gems I had more than sufficient to fill two
tumblers. And when we all came to compare notes together upon our
return on board I found that I was by no means the most fortunate one of
the party, the skipper's total and those of three of the forecastle
hands considerably exceeding mine in quantity.