It was just five bells when we weathered the northern extremity of the reef and bore away to look for the entrance to the lagoon. I was then aloft again, for the sake of the more extended view obtainable from the height of the topgallant yard; and as we swept past the reef, and I looked down upon it, I thought I had never seen a more ghastly place for a solitary human being to be cast away upon. It was composed, apparently, of nothing but coral, upon which the everlasting surf was gradually casting up a deposit of sand, which, when dry, the wind was as gradually distributing over its surface. Here and there I observed dark patches which I took to be seaweed, partly buried in the sand; and there was a tolerably well defined tide-mark, consisting apparently of more seaweed, and flotsam of various kinds cast up by the surf.
But the most remarkable thing about the island was the multitude of birds, gulls principally. There were thousands of them in the air about the reef, and many more thousands of them sitting on the reef itself. The time was no doubt coming when the guano of these birds, their dead bodies, and the refuse of their food, mingling and agglomerating with the sand and rotting seaweed, would form an extraordinarily rich soil, upon which a few coconuts, drifting across the illimitable ocean, would be cast up by the surf, and, becoming buried, would sprout, throw out roots and shoots, and become trees, as has happened in the case of so many others of the Pacific islands. But at that moment there was not a green thing upon it.
The atoll, as a whole, was almost perfectly circular in shape, having a diameter of about four miles; and for purposes of description it may be spoken of as consisting of three parts, namely, the island, the lagoon, and the encircling reef. The island, which, being dry, was of course the highest part of the atoll, measured about three and a quarter miles long, and was crescent-shaped, being about three-eighths of a mile wide in the middle, tapering off north and south in the form of the cusps of the crescent moon; and from the extremities of the two cusps there swept away the encircling reef which enclosed the lagoon in a very perfect natural breakwater, having the inevitable opening as nearly as might be in its middle, just opposite the widest part of the island. But although I have spoken of the island as being the highest part, it must not be supposed that even this rose any considerable height above the level of the ocean, its highest point, as we subsequently ascertained, being only a bare six feet above the water’s surface.
I was fortunate enough to catch a glimpse of the passage through the reef almost immediately after going aloft; we therefore had no difficulty in hitting it off, and, conning the schooner from the crosstrees, I took her through without a hitch, our anchor plunging into the placid waters of the lagoon a few minutes after the skipper had struck six bells.
“Well, gents,” Brown remarked, rubbing his hands, as, having been forward to supervise the mooring of the ship in my absence aloft, he came aft and joined Cunningham and myself, while the crew took to the rigging and went aloft to furl the canvas, “here we are at last; and ne’er a sign of the Kingfisher anywhere about. Did ye happen to notice anything at all like a h’yster bank anywhere near while you was aloft, Mr Temple?”
“Yes, sir, I did,” answered I. “I took a good look round while we were coming in, and I noticed a distinct discoloration of the water about a mile out, as dead to leeward of the island as it can possibly be. I have no doubt we shall find that to be the shoal of which your friend spoke. And there was another thing I noticed while I was aloft, and which I will take this opportunity of mentioning. The island is literally covered with birds, sir, and, unfortunate as is the necessity, I am afraid that our very first task must be to kill every one of them.”
“Kill off them birds, Mr Temple?” echoed the skipper, in a tone of mingled surprise and indignation. “Why, what harm are they adoin’?”
“None at all at present, sir. But—by the way, how do you propose to obtain the pearls which you hope to procure from the oysters in yonder bed?”
“Well,” answered the skipper, “I had it in my mind to take the schooner out to the bed every mornin’ and anchor her right on top of it. Then I thought of lowerin’ the boats, and, as the oysters comes up, dischargin’ ’em into the boats, one boat at a time, until we’ve got a fair cargo, a’ter which that boat’ll be sent ashore in charge of, say, two men; and Number 2 boat’ll be loadin’ while Number 1 is goin’ ashore and comin’ back. And when the oysters is took ashore, my plan is to spread ’em out on the island and let ’em rot in the sun, an’—ah yes! now I see what you means about them blamed birds. They’ll just go for them rottin’ oysters an’ play the very Ole Gooseberry with ’em—is that what you mean?”
“Precisely,” I said. “They will attack the decaying oysters, and you will probably lose about three-fourths of your pearls.”