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Pearling economists insist that dredging by machinery or the use of diving-suits can never compete with the simple and inexpensive method in vogue on the Manar banks. At Marichchikkaddi one hears frequent discussion of the time a diver may stay under water, and many improbable accounts of what has been done are told a visitor.
"Well, I have seen some curious things in my time," said Fryer, the American master of a Torres Straits pearling schooner, to the other men, as they watched Charlton and his wife drive away from the hotel, "but to think that that fellow should marry a lady! I wonder if she has the faintest idea of what an anointed scoundrel he is?"
Instead, they were practically kidnapped by force, and treated or rather ill-treated as slaves for several years. First of all, the poor creatures were taken to an island in the vicinity of North-West Cape, off which the pearling fleet lay.
Cossack, it appears, was the pearling rendezvous on the western side of the continent, much as Somerset was on the north-east, at the extremity of the Cape York Peninsula. My tongue or pen can never tell what those young ladies were to me in my terrible exile.
'Very well, said Burton, an hour later, to Von Hammer, 'you can take him. I don't want the brute here. But he is a dangerous devil, mind. Where do you say he comes from? 'Onêata Saint David's Island a little bit of a sandy atoll, as big as Manono over there, and much like it, too. I know the place well lived there once when I was pearling, ten years ago.
At that time she was as mother and chief to me, and I could never have wished her so much bitterness as she must have felt sitting unvisited in the Place of the Silences, while I took the Adelantado pearling, and the fighting men, who should have fallen upon him at her word, danced for his entertainment.
The comings and goings of the various pearling expeditions were of course regulated by the weather and the state of the tide. The captain himself went out first of all in the whale-boat, and from it prospected for shells at the bottom of the crystal sea.
Knowing him as I had for many years as an honest old fellow, I listened with interest to what he had to say, and in a few minutes he had satisfied Tracey and myself that he knew of the existence of one of the richest pearling grounds in the Pacific; and provided he could find partners who would deal squarely with him, he would disclose the exact locality.
Count Haugwitz heaved a profound sigh, and wiped off the perspiration pearling in large drops on his brow. He then took the king's letter from his side-pocket and perused it once more. "It is the king's handwriting," he said, shaking his head, "and it is also his peculiar laconic style."
Of course, I did not know much about the awful dangers to which we were exposing ourselves by remaining out in such uncertain seas when the cyclones were due; and I did not, I confess, see any great reason why we should not continue pearling. I was inexperienced, you see. The pearl-fishing season, as I afterwards learned, extends from November to May.
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