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 proportio