By the end of the fortnight, however, we discovered that even the accumulation of wealth by scooping up pearl-oysters from the bottom of the sea may become monotonous after a while, especially when the accumulation is for somebody else’s benefit; therefore, with one accord, we petitioned “Old Man” Brown to give us a change of occupation by allowing us to amuse ourselves searching for pearls among the rotting fish, which now covered a considerable portion of the leeward half of the island. And Brown gladly jumped at the proposal; for he was every day growing more anxious lest the Kingfisher and her crew of “toughs” should heave in sight and become troublesome, and was more than willing to make sure of such spoil as we had already accumulated. Therefore, on a certain morning, instead of getting the schooner under way and proceeding to the oyster bank, as usual, the longboat was hauled alongside, and, attired in our very oldest clothes, armed with a ship’s bucket each, and provided with a plentiful supply of disinfectant cloths to fasten over our mouths and nostrils upon reaching the field of action, all hands of us, except the cook and the cabin boy, got into her and pulled away for the shore.
The air was literally darkened by the immense numbers of birds that had returned to the island, attracted by the odour, after having been driven off, and we soon saw that a few of the bolder of them had summoned up courage to settle among our oysters, despite the scarecrow which we had set up; but they took to flight immediately upon our approach, and hovered over us all day, uttering their melancholy cries with such persistency, and creating such a volume of sound, that we could scarcely hear our own voices.
However, we were there not to talk but to work. Upon stepping ashore the first thing we did, after securing the boat, was to fill our buckets with clean salt water, in which to wash and deposit any pearls that we might find; next we swathed our mouths and nostrils with the disinfecting cloths; and then, told off by the skipper, each of us took a row of the decaying fish and proceeded to search carefully the putrid matter for what many people regard as the most lovely gems in the world.
There is no need for me to dilate upon the disagreeable, not to say disgusting nature of the task upon which we now found ourselves engaged; it may safely be left to the imagination of the reader, and I will content myself with merely placing upon record the fact that it was infinitely worse than even Cunningham or I had anticipated—and we believed that we had gauged the objectionable character of the work pretty accurately. But, so far at least as I was concerned, I soon forgot the sickeningly offensive nature of my work in the interest attaching to it, for I had not been five minutes engaged upon it when I came upon a most superb pearl, perfectly globular in shape, with the exquisite sheeny lustre peculiar to gems of what are termed the first water, and, as nearly as might be, an inch in diameter. Such a find as this was more than enough to make me forget all the disagreeableness of the work upon which I was engaged, and to stimulate my curiosity to its highest pitch. Accordingly I proceeded with zest, and within an hour had secured a round dozen of good-sized pearls—although none of them approached the first in size—together with a sufficient quantity of smaller pearls to fill about one-third of an ordinary half-pint tumbler. Nor was this first hour of mine an exceptionally fortunate one, for when we knocked off work at the end of the day my total find amounted to no less than one hundred and seven pearls, ranging in size from half an inch in diameter up to a monster that measured just over an inch and a quarter, while of smaller gems I had more than sufficient to fill two tumblers. And when we all came to compare notes together upon our return on board I found that I was by no means the most fortunate one of the party, the skipper’s total and those of three of the forecastle hands considerably exceeding mine in quantity.
Chapter Eight.
The “Kingfisher” of Nantucket.
It was on the third day of our repulsive work among the decaying oysters that the expected happened. We were all assiduously at work as usual, groping with our fingers among the rotting fish for the sudden sensation of hardness which proclaimed the presence of the gems, when one of the party, straightening himself up for a moment to take the kinks out of his backbone, let out a sudden yell of: “Sail ho!”
“Where away?” demanded the skipper, starting to his feet and staring about him; and in a moment all hands of us were standing up and following the “Old Man’s” example. There was no need for a reply to the skipper’s question, for we had but to look to see the stranger instantly—a topsail-schooner, about five miles distant, coming up from the southward, close-hauled, under a press of sail.