way to leeward as we could. We had done with
those, and now tossed them aside, in order that we might not
inadvertently find ourselves handling them a second time. We toiled
assiduously throughout the whole of that day, my two companions smoking
steadily all the time in order to counteract, as far as might be, the
sickening odour of the fast-decaying fish.

When we knocked off work shortly before sunset we found that altogether
we had gathered during the day five hundred and nineteen pearls varying
in size from a large pea to a marble, and nearly a quart measure full of
seed pearl. Our prizes were, generally speaking, of the usual soft,
sheeny, white colour; but there were exceptions to this, two more pink
pearls being found, as well as one of a deep rich exquisite rose colour,
one of a very delicate shade of sea-green, and seven of so very dark a
smoke colour that they were almost black. We did not think very much of
these last, believing that their extremely dark colour was against them;
but we ultimately discovered that this was very far from being the case,
that precise shade of colour being exceedingly rare.

None of us had much appetite for food that night when we got back to the
ship; and when we turned out next morning we were even less desirous of
food than we had been on the previous evening. We were all suffering
from violent headaches, accompanied by great nausea, and were fain to
confess that we had had quite enough of the oyster-bed for the present.
We therefore soon agreed to let that part of the reef very severely
alone for at least a week, and to devote the interval to the prosecution
of our survey of the channel. Accordingly, after making an ineffectual
attempt to do justice to the excellent meal which Grace Hartley had
provided for us, we three males hauled the boat alongside, descended
into her, and got under way.

Our course, for the first seven and a half miles, lay along the canal
leading to the oyster-bed, our purpose being to examine two promising-
looking channels that branched out of it, and that we had already
noticed and commented upon. On reaching the more distant--and, as we
thought, the more promising--of the two we bore up and, with the wind
over our starboard quarter, ran away on a west-south-west course for
about five miles, next hauling up to about south. But by the time that
we had run some four miles in this new direction we saw clearly that
this channel could be of no pos