"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 mult.i.tude of birds, gulls princ.i.p.ally. 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 pa.s.sage 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 ash.o.r.e in charge of, say, two men; and Number 2 boat'll be loadin' while Number 1 is goin' ash.o.r.e and comin'

back. And when the oysters is took ash.o.r.e, 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 quant.i.ty of ammunition, and we will go ash.o.r.e 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," a.s.sented 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, G.o.d 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 ash.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e 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 pa.s.s 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 antic.i.p.ated; 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 sh.o.r.e 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 pa.s.sed 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 ash.o.r.e and set up the figure, the birds taking to the air with loud, plaintive cries the moment that we stepped ash.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sed 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 windla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 pa.s.sage 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 a.s.sisted 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 sh.e.l.ls. A second attempt fared no better, and the disappointed seeker flung the sh.e.l.ls 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 sh.e.l.ls 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 gla.s.s 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 repet.i.tion 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 pa.s.sed, 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 carca.s.s, 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 acc.u.mulated 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 acc.u.mulation of wealth by scooping up pearl-oysters from the bottom of the sea may become monotonous after a while, especially when the acc.u.mulation is for somebody else's benefit; therefore, with one accord, we pet.i.tioned "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 acc.u.mulated. 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 sh.o.r.e.

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 ash.o.r.e 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 antic.i.p.ated--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 l.u.s.tre 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 quant.i.ty 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 quant.i.ty.