The pearl lagoon

by Charles Nordhoff

"Look," he said, "he's gone into that hole yonder! See the mouth of it a couple of fathoms down? This must be his den."

Holding the line with one hand, he took up the lance and ordered the rowers to back water—to keep a steady galling strain on the fish. "The iron is tickling him," he remarked when five minutes had passed. "I can feel him twitch. Look lively now! He'll be out in a moment—Ah! Here he comes!"

Far in beneath the coral the cave must have broadened, for the shark had turned to face the entrance of his lair. He came out with a rush, maddened by the pain of his wound, open-mouthed and at bay. Before Ofai could pull in his oar the monster had wrenched it from his hands and turned to sink his teeth in the cutwater of the boat. But my uncle was ready with the lance. Again and again his arm rose and thrust downward, and at each stroke the keen blade bit deep. The water reddened; the jaws relaxed their hold; the tail ceased its lashing and lay quiet. The huge carcass turned belly-upward and sank in the clear blue channel beneath us.

Uncle Harry laid down the lance and came aft to light a cigar. "That's a good day's work," he said. "No diving with that fellow about! He's sinking now; we'll have the boys cut the line and make the end fast to the coral. To-morrow he'll float high—I'll send a couple of men to cut out the jaws. They'll make you a fine souvenir of Iriatai."

There was rejoicing when we arrived at camp, for the native regards a large shark with a peculiar, superstitious dread. There had been much talk among the divers since the night before, but now their fears were at an end and they busied themselves with preparations for the ensuing day.

That night, when dinner was over and we sat talking on the Tara's deck, my uncle explained to me the terms of the agreement under which his divers worked. "Ordinarily," he said, "when the Government opens the lagoons the men are free to keep everything they bring up: the shell and the pearls are theirs to do with as they please. The traders keep track of all the better men and do their best to get them as deeply as possible in debt before the season begins. You can imagine what happens when credit is offered to simple fellows like these Paumotans: they run up bills for all sorts of useless trash—guitars; silk dresses and high-heeled shoes for their women; cheap perfume at five or six dollars a bottle; every kind of fancy white-man's food in tins. They load up with this sort of stuff till they are over their heads in debt. By the time he begins to dive, each native is safe in the clutches of some trading-house—Chinese, more often than not—and every pearl and every pound of shell must be sold to the creditor at the creditor's price.

"It is different here on Iriatai, for the men know that I have a year's monopoly of the lagoon. But there is more shell, and it lies in shallower water than in the lagoons which have been worked for a generation, so the divers are glad to accept my terms. Ever since I came to the islands I have tried to deal honestly with the people, for I have a theory that the savage appreciates a square deal as well as a civilized man. It has paid me, too. As you know, I am furnishing the canoes and advancing a reasonable amount of food and goods. The men have agreed, on their side, to work every day the weather permits and to let me make the first offer on their catch. Half of the shell goes to me; all of the pearls and the other half of the shell will be theirs. At the end of the season I'll make each man an offer on his shell—cleaned, sacked, and loaded aboard the Tara. As for the pearls, they will be brought out every night and offered for sale to me. Those I do not care to buy, or for which the owners think they can get a higher price in Tahiti, will be sold in the open market when we go North. But I'll get all the really fine ones—I can pay good prices and still double my money in every case!"

In the morning I had my first sight of pearl-diving as it is practised among the atolls of the Paumotus.

The men we had brought with us from Raiatea, reënforced by a few volunteers from the copra-makers of Iriatai, made up fifteen crews of two men each. I say men, but one of the best of the lot was an elderly brown woman, and there was not a man who could dive deeper than old Maruia, or bring up more shell in a day.

Each canoe was equipped with its paddles, an anchor at the end of thirty fathoms of line, a five-gallon kerosene-tin, a stout knife, and two coils of light rope—one attached to the diving-weight, the other to a large openwork basket of bamboo. The two members of the crew shared equally in the catch, though almost without exception one man did all the diving while his partner remained at the surface, raising and lowering the basket, cleaning the shell roughly, opening the oysters and inspecting them for pearls.