CHAPTER VII
LEONA AND THE ISLANDERS
Three months and over had passed and gone, and though, during at least six weeks of this time, there were violent storms of rain and thunder, that seemed to shake the island to its very foundation, still the fishing went merrily on.
The dark-skinned natives were paid with cloth, beads, and tobacco. Money they despised.
The whole bottom of that deep lagoon was bedded inches deep with pearl oysters; and the savages worked like Trojans, seeming never to tire.
Their drink was the water found in the young cocoa-nuts. While still green, these contain about a pint and a half of pure water that tastes like iced milk. At this time the nut contains no kernel, only a little delicious transparent jelly sticking around the shell.
Our boys went constantly down in their divers’ suits, and could remain comfortably below a long time, and fill their bags, while the natives could stay but little over a minute.
Our young heroes were permitted to keep all the pearls they found, and many were very valuable.
But diving was not unattended with danger, for in the lagoon were not only sharks—huge and awful monsters—but great, ungainly, horrid alligators.
Somehow they never dared attack the boys or Antonio in the diver’s dress.
The savages used to dive together in parties of six to ten, and they were then unmolested by the tigers of the sea.