The Pearl Fishers

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

The whites of Sru's eyes had a yellow tinge, and the glint of his teeth as he raised his lip was like a gleam of ivory reflected from a million years ago, the scars on his breast and arms, seen close to like this, had a deep significance, and the smell of him, hot, gorse-like, and faintly goatlike, was the smell of all fierce and savage things, hinted at and vaguely expressed. The John Tan plug he was smoking lent its fierce perfume to the natural scent of him, and he spat between his teeth and grumbled in his throat when he was not talking.

Sru was a revelation when you found yourself close to him like this, under the sun on a desolate beach, and with civilization thousands of miles away.

After a while Floyd ordered the raft to be brought to the beach edge, and, getting on to it, pushed out to inspect the work of the divers.

Oysters do not lie flat at the bottom of the sea; they lean with mouths agape at an angle of twenty to twenty-five degrees with the sea floor. The great clams do likewise. Floyd, looking down, could see the men who had just dived groping along the bottom, skylarking as they worked. One fellow who was in the act of rising with a couple of shells which he had secured, was caught by the foot by a companion. He dropped the shells and retaliated, the pair coming to the surface, bursting with want of air and suppressed laughter.

As Schumer said, they were like children, and their work had a large element of play in it. Still, they worked after their fashion, wet hands continually seizing the raft edge and depositing the dripping shells on it.

Although the quickest way of dealing with oysters in the mass is by rotting them, the search for pearls can be conducted on oysters fresh from the sea, and Floyd, as he sat on the raft, amused himself by opening some of the shells with his pocketknife, choosing the largest for this purpose. He found no pearls, but plenty of surprises. Nearly every large oyster in the southern seas gives shelter to a "messmate." A little crab, a small lobster, a worm, or a shrimp, lives in the shell along with the host. In some fisheries, as down in Sooloo, lobsters are only found, but here, as Floyd opened shell after shell, there was always something new—now a crab, now a worm, now a harmless creature, half shrimp, half crawfish.

Tiring of the business at last, he put ashore and turned his attention to the heap of shell "ripe" and gaping, putrid from exposure to the air, and waiting to be searched for pearls. He had got so used to the business now that it was scarcely unpleasant. Sru and one of the hands assisted him, and the work went forward without result for an hour, not even a seed pearl appearing in all the slimy mess carefully washed out in the trough of the canvas.

Schumer seemed to have taken the luck away with him. They knocked off for a rest and a smoke, and then went at it again with, as a final result of their morning's labor, a baroque pearl about the size of a sixpence, and a pearl of indifferent luster and weighing about ten grains.

"No good," said Sru, with a grunt of dissatisfaction; "heap few, heap big work."

"Heap plenty, maybe soon," replied Floyd, turning away. He felt depressed without the least reason for being so. No one knew better than he the uncertainties of this work, and how much it approximates to gambling. It was, perhaps, the feeling that Schumer had taken the luck away with him that caused the depression. Want of success is never inspiriting; actual defeat is a better tonic for the mind. He placed the morning's catch in the box he carried for the purpose, and, getting in the boat, rowed back to the encampment.