The pearl lagoon

by Charles Nordhoff

That night we anchored the Tara off the village of my uncle's laborers, natives established on the island to plant and to make copra as the trees began to bear. Next morning, with a dozen fresh helpers gossiping on deck and a man at the masthead to give us warning of shoals, the Tara sailed the length of the lagoon and found a berth close to the high islet at the farther end. Our divers made their camp on that ten-acre dot of land, shaded by old palms which had survived the hurricane.

While the divers floated their canoes ashore and set to work to lash on the outriggers, the other men launched the boats to transfer the schooner's cargo to the beach. The women and children went ashore at once, stacked their belongings in individual heaps, and busied themselves with plaiting the palm-fronds with which their houses would be thatched.

The younger women and some of the boys swarmed up the trees like monkeys, machete in hand, and soon the green fronds were crashing to the ground on every side. Their older companions chopped off the heavy butts and split each rib down the middle, making a pair of tough strips of fibrous wood, fringed along one side with the narrow leaves of the coconut. Squatting on their heels, while their fingers worked with marvelous rapidity and skill, the women braided these leaves together to form strips of coarse green matting, a foot wide and eight feet long. As each piece was finished it was stacked on the growing family pile. By nightfall the last of the canoes was assembled and they were hauled up in a line on the beach. The men were now ready for their task of housebuilding. In two days our village on the islet was complete.

They began by clearing the chosen site, a couple of acres in extent. There was a dense growth of wild hibiscus under the coconut palms, and as they chopped this away with axe and bush-knife, they took care to save the long straight poles which would be of use. Then each man selected the place for his house and set to work by himself. With the help of his wife and children he dug four holes and set the corner-posts, forked at the top to receive the long poles corresponding to plates. Midway between the corner-posts at each end of the house, a much taller post was set, to support the ridgepole. Then plates and ridgepole were laid on their forked supports and lashed in place with strips of tough hibiscus-bark. Next, the rafters were made fast at a steep pitch, laid at intervals of about a foot, and a similar light framework was lashed to the gable ends. At this stage the house was ready to be thatched.

Now the entire family went to the far end of the islet to cut armfuls of bark for tying on their thatch, and when a supply of this natural cord was on hand, they set up light temporary scaffoldings of poles and took their places,—the woman outside, the man inside the roof,—to lay the thatch of plaited fronds. Working from the eaves toward the ridgepole, the strips were laid on like shingles, each one overlapping by four or five inches the one beneath, with the split midrib tied firmly to each rafter that it crossed. After the roof, the gable ends were thatched; a doorway was framed on the leeward side, and a rustic siding of hibiscus wands, placed vertically as close together as they would go, was set up from ground to plates. Then the family gathered the snowy coral gravel on the beach and spread it several inches deep to make a floor. The house was finished—cool, airy, and weatherproof, beautifully adapted to an environment where lumber and corrugated iron were out of place.

But lumber and iron were necessary for our water supply, and while the natives were busy with their housebuilding, we set to work to build a long low shed, with a gutter along the lower edge of the roof, from which tin piping would conduct the rain water to a series of large connected tanks. The drinking-nuts would never suffice for such a gathering, and fresh water was the one important thing the islet lacked. We relied on the rains to furnish our supply, and the shed was to serve as a store, and as a warehouse for our shells when that had been cleaned and sacked.

The building was finished on a Saturday, and that night the men went out in their canoes to fish. They were all Christians and they kept the Sabbath more religiously than most of us at home. The missionaries who had converted them were of the strict old Calvinist school, which taught that it was sinful to fish, or plant, or to do any kind of work on the day of rest. My uncle respected the divers' beliefs, but he had communicated his own restless energy to the members of the Tara's crew, and on that Sunday, while the Paumotans dozed in the shade of their new houses, we took the whaleboat on an excursion to explore the diving-grounds. When we returned at sunset the others shook their heads—in their eyes we had reaped the reward of sacrilege, for our boating-party had come near to ending tragically.

The lagoon was calm that morning, calm as an inland lake, its surface ruffled at intervals by faint catspaws from the north. Looking back toward the pass, there was no land in sight—the blue water met the sky in an unbroken line. Ahead of us, at the northern end of the atoll, the seabeach was little more than a mile away, and the thunder of the breakers was borne to our ears, now loud, now soft, on flaws of air. My uncle stood in the stern and I sat beside him; Fatu was in the bow, Ivi and Ofai at the oars. Once or twice Fatu motioned my uncle to change his course, to avoid the coral mushrooms rising to within a few inches of the surface, but in general the depth of the lagoon varied from six to twenty fathoms. Gazing down through the blue translucent water, I could see the strange forms of growing coral far beneath us; and sometimes, as the bottom turned sandy and the water shoaled, the lagoon shaded to purest emerald green. Clad only in a scarlet pareu, with his bronzed back and shoulders bare, Uncle Harry was leaning over the side, gazing intently at the bottom through a water glass. He had given the word to go slowly, and the men were resting on their oars.

"This is the place," he said; "we'll anchor here and let Ofai go down for a look."

While Fatu was paying out the anchor line, I took the glass and leaned over to see what I could make out. The water was about twelve fathoms deep, and far down beneath the whaleboat's keel I could distinguish the purple coral on the floor of the lagoon. Ofai, the Rangiroa boy, was preparing himself to dive. He coiled a long cotton line in the bottom of the boat, and made fast to one end of it a thirty-pound bulb of lead, like an enormous sinker. Then he adjusted his goggles and went over the side. While he lay in the water, drawing a series of deep breaths, Fatu passed him the weight. He allowed it to sink a yard beneath him, seized the rope between the toes of one foot, and took a grip, high up on the line, with his left hand.