The boats having anchored within a few yards of each other, well in toward the centre of the shoal, a rope ladder was dropped over the side of each, the nets were lowered to the bottom, each of them containing one of the shovels; and then Mildmay and the professor descended to the bottom, where they met. The water was beautifully clear, and the light good. They were therefore able to see without difficulty; and a single glance sufficed to show them that the account of the shoal in von Schalckenberg’s book was in no sense an exaggerated one. They stood upon a bed of pearl-oysters, so thick that the sand could not be seen. Moreover, the oysters were of unusual size; not, of course, that that signified anything, because it is not always the largest oyster that yields the finest pearls.
The professor glanced about him, taking in as comprehensive a view of his surroundings as the dense medium in which he was immersed would permit, took up an oyster or two at haphazard, looked at them, and then said to Mildmay—
“It appears to me to be quite useless to attempt anything in the way of making a selection; the only thing that we can do is to take the oysters as they come, shovel them into the net until it is full, and then signal to those in the boats to draw them up. And, while doing this, we must keep a wary eye for sharks—not that the creatures could hurt us, attired, as we are, in this armour, but there is this danger, that we might be seized and carried so far away before we could free ourselves that it might be impossible to find our way back to the boats. If, therefore, any of them should appear upon the scene, we must use our daggers, and that right quickly.”
The surrounding water was, however, quite clear of everything of a menacing character at that moment. The two men therefore got to work, spreading the mouths of their nets wide open, and simply shovelling the oysters into them until they were full, when they signalled to those in the boats to haul them up. This process they continued for something over an hour, until the boats were about half-full, and the time had arrived for them to return to the island.
The return journey was uneventful, except in so far as it showed them that the boats were loaded quite as deeply as was desirable for the safe negotiation of that part of the passage which lay to windward of the atoll; and when once they were safely inside the lagoon, they proceeded straight to the spot already chosen by them for the purpose, and discharged their cargoes into the shallow basin of rock. This afternoon’s haul amounted to some thousands of oysters, but they now saw that the basin was sufficiently capacious to accommodate at least a fortnight’s catch, reckoning upon the basis of their afternoon’s work.
On the following day the same party again went out, making two trips to the shoal, one in the morning, and one in the afternoon, thus continuing for a fortnight, by which time their saucer-like depression in the rock was full, while about half of the entire catch was in a sufficiently advanced stage of decomposition to admit of being examined and the pearls abstracted therefrom. This, as will be supposed, was a most disgusting and intensely disagreeable task, but the returns were so unexpectedly rich that the revolting character of the work was quickly lost sight of in the interest with which discovery after discovery was made of pearls that, for size, shape, and purity of colour, promised to prove priceless. Their first day’s work among the putrid fish resulted in their taking on board at night an ordinary ship’s bucket nearly half-full of pearls, a considerable proportion of which might be ranked as specially valuable. The proportion of seed pearls was singularly small, and, toward the close of the second day’s work, was considered of so little value, comparatively, as to be not worth the time and trouble of collecting. To attempt to put anything more than the merest approximate estimate of value upon their catch was of course quite out of the question; but when the result of their third day’s labour was added to that of their first and second, von Schalckenberg, who claimed to be something of an authority in such matters, declared that the whole must be worth not far short of one hundred thousand pounds, if indeed it did not exceed that value.
The enthusiasm with which the men had been working at their highly unpleasant task of extracting the pearls from their loathsome envelopment had so far cooled by the end of the third day that it had been unanimously resolved to take a change of occupation on the following day by again going out to the shoal and securing a further supply of oysters. The suggestion emanated from von Schalckenberg in the first instance; he made it upon the plea that such a change was very highly desirable in the interests of their health; and the proposal had been eagerly welcomed by all hands, most of whom had already begun to complain of nausea, and to exhibit a more or less marked distaste for food.
That there really was distinct need for such a precaution seemed to be borne out next morning by the fact that when the party mustered for breakfast Barker was found to be an absentee, and upon George being dispatched to his cabin to awaken him, upon the assumption that he had overslept himself, the man presently returned with a message to the effect that the absentee was suffering from a splitting headache, that he required no breakfast, and that “he guessed” he would spend the morning in bed, if it was all the same to the others. Whereupon von Schalckenberg paid him a professional visit, looked at his tongue, asked him a few questions, and sent him a draught to take. Sir Reginald—who, now that his wife and child were with him, had evinced a rather marked tendency toward over-anxiety in all matters relating to sickness—was very particular in his inquiries as to the invalid’s condition, and was with difficulty reassured by the professor’s assertion that there was certainly nothing worse the matter with him than, possibly, a slight attack of biliousness. The remaining five men, therefore, went away in the boats after breakfast, Sir Reginald taking the precaution to carry his telephone along with him, in order that Lady Olivia might have the means of communicating with him in the event of further and more serious symptoms manifesting themselves in the case of the sick man.
Arrived at the shoal, the divers—Mildmay and von Schalckenberg as before—went down and got to work; but Barker’s absence was felt when it came to hauling up the full nets, the weight of which proved to be rather too much for one man to handle, and it therefore became necessary to haul up the nets one at a time, discharge both into the same boat, and, when she was as full as was thought desirable, leave her, shifting over to the other boat and loading her in the same way. The consequence of this was that they were late in completing their cargoes, and it was already considerably past the luncheon-hour when at length they lifted their anchors and started back toward the lagoon. Nothing had been heard in the mean time from Lady Olivia, from which circumstance it was deduced that the patient was at all events no worse.
Scarcely, however, had the boats got under way when the bell of the telephone in Sir Reginald’s pocket began to ring, and he whipped the instrument out with the remark—