When there are any such squaloid around the fishing place, no day passes without there being "knots to untie," between the divers and the tintoreras, as well as the pez mantas, and, almost always, the men only cut clear after horrible struggles.
When the diver takes his "header," his fellow paddles the skiff forward so as to accompany the plunger's diagonal immersion, whilst his rise is, on the contrary, vertical. This is done to pick up the swimmer at the very identical instant of his reaching the surface, his left arm laden with oysters and his lungs eager to catch air. Then he climbs in, takes the paddle, and manages similarly whilst his mate does the diving.
Good divers go very deep, the most famous can touch bottom at twelve and even fifteen fathoms, and can stay under for seven or nine minutes, but these are rare, the majority not surpassing four and five minutes, which is very pretty. The mated divers keep on by turns until they have brought up the requisite quantity of oysters. Their gains are miserable, and those whom captain Gladsden engaged were delighted to get a dollar a dozen. Many a shell has to be opened before any pearls are found; ten or twelve per cent is a good proportion for the enriched ones, and then again, many pearls are far from valuable. The basis of the estimation is the orient, as much as to say the lustre of the concentric layers, the "water," the roundness, and the size. Those worth a couple of thousand dollars are found on the South American coast, and still more seldom in "the Sea of Cortes," where we now are.
Whilst the hired Indians were engaged at this submarine toil, Benito and the two red men, old acquaintances of his, who would not have engaged themselves to another master, were searching the water at the side of the brigantine first, and latter, farther and farther away, accompanied by the yawl, two men pulling so that the two red men could rest calmly till they relieved the Mexican at the watery work.
For a time there was a growing belief that Ignacio's brother had lied, or that the chest had been burst by the waters churned up by the temporal, as is named the terrible wind, the West Coast counterpart for "the Norther" of Texas, or, at the best, moved it away into deep water. But Benito and his copper acolytes were expert in judging the aquatic "signs," and soon pronounced that the bluish tint that denoted a pearl oyster bed, showed a bright bar from a break in its continuity. The chest had dragged, but was not lost. Within an hour, all three divers being down at once, the old Indian came up and uttered a joyous shout on expelling his breath. He had a fragment of tarry rope. Next, Benito struck the trail, and came up crying, as soon as he could speak, that he had discovered the chest, the buoys had been eaten away by marine creatures on the tooth of time, and the treasure coffer had sunk, crushing into an oyster bed. The wounded oysters had exuded their pearly fluid and coated the strange object beautifully, and the shellfish had settled on it, but there it was in its lustrous and lovely mantle.
The yawl returned to the brigantine with this good news. It was coming on dark, so that nothing could be done till morning, but make ready a drag and hauling and lifting tackle, the hooks of which the chief diver and his aides undertook to attach, as confidently as others would work on dry land in open air.
Doña Dolores, whom, as a young bride, her husband had allowed to indulge in all her caprices—and heaven knows a Mexican girl, liberated by wedlock, so to say, paradoxically, has an infinity of tastes to gratify—had indulged in too much sweetmeat to have been a good sailor. As a consequence she was glad of the suggestion of Gladsden that, during the anchorage, she should remain on shore in the best hut of the little settlement. With the things landed from the Burlonilla the haquel (little hut) was made tolerable lodgings—a relief to the confinement of the brigantine's cabin.
The night was lovely, after a glorious sunset, when the reflections of the sublime play of orange and vermilion suggested why the early navigators were led to call those upper waters of the Gulf the Red Sea (Mar Rojo), rather than because the united streams of the Gila and Colorado pours, dyed with iron and copper, into the clearer blue.
In the deep, deep sky the stars glittered like diamonds of more than mortal polish. There was a mingling of air off the peninsula fragrant with wild flowers, of air off the Gulf, of tempered briny billows bumping the rocks of Cape St. Lucas, and of hot, dry breath from the mainland, rich with a honey like sweetness that cloyed. All was still, all was lonely, and the sole cry, at long intervals, was that of the lean coyote, stealing over the sands and mingling his starlight shadow with those of the giant cacti, shaped like colossal men brandishing maces and clubs, as he curiously regarded the brigantine. If a slight breeze ran along the shore it almost musically clattered the oysters clustered on rushes and mangroves, standing part submerged. Behind them the mesquite and acacia, and back of all the sparse woods on the rising slope: beyond that peaks well apart.
Once in the night watch the lookout reported a red fire gleam southwards like a fallen star quenching itself in the Gulf, and twice smoke was espied in the same quarter.