Atolls of the Sun

by Frederick O'Brien

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.