ere still a good two miles from the oyster-bed we saw the
birds hovering over it in thousands, and I strongly suspected that upon
arrival we should find that those same birds had played havoc with our
previous day's work. And so we did; for when we reached the spot we
found our neatly arranged rows of oysters turned topsy-turvy by the
birds in their endeavours to get at the fish, while the odour that
emanated from the millions of dead bivalves was already powerful enough
to upset any but a strong stomach.

Although the birds had completely disarranged our labours of the
preceding day, they did not appear to have otherwise done any very
serious damage. It is true that every single oyster that we had laid
out so carefully had been attacked, dragged out of place, and the fish
extracted; but nearly a hundred pearls of value were found between the
otherwise empty shells, while a careful examination of the ground
revealed fully as many more, together with as much seed pearl as would
rather more than fill a half-pint measure. Grace Hartley accompanied us
from the boat to the oyster-bed, and remained long enough to actually
find for herself two very fine pearls; but that sufficed. She confessed
that the effluvium was altogether too powerful for her, and beat a hasty
retreat to the boat, where she spent the remainder of the day in
comparative comfort, only an occasional faint whiff of odour reaching
her there. As for us males, we had taken the precaution to bring along
with us a ship's bucket, which we filled with salt water upon leaving
the boat, and every pearl found, whether large or small, was dropped
into this as soon as found.

Our first task was to go very carefully over the ground upon which we
had laid out our oysters on the previous day, retrieving the pearls that
had been thrown out of the shells by the birds in their endeavours to
extract the fish; and when we had satisfied ourselves that no more were
to be found there, we turned our attention to the bed itself, where also
the birds had been, and still remained, exceedingly busy. But we did
not then attempt to look for spilled pearls, for the bulk of the oysters
were by this time dead, and had been so long enough to render the
opening of the shells quite an easy matter. We therefore wandered about
the bed examining such of the shells as happened to be gaping open,
extracting any pearls that might happen to be therein, and then flinging
fish and shell as far a