Pearl Diver - Pearl Diving

-The Pearl Diver

Steaming along by South Passage Island we come suddenly upon a Salone camp. There is a fan of white sand with some boats and huts upon it, and I can see a few men and women moving. By the time I can step ashore—and it takes no more than five minutes over the emerald colored water—they all run away into the island jungle, and only one man remains looking ill at ease.

The Andaman Sea beach village of the pearl hunter consists of three boats and three huts ; but to call them huts is to misname them, for they arc of all human habitations the slightest. They consist of a few thin sticks—I can count six upright and three laid horizontally, in one—and a frail pleated mat laid over the top. A mat of bamboo strips is spread on the white sand within. Some of their few possessions are scattered around ; bags, baskets, and bedding of mat, and other articles showing some contact with civilization ; large Pegu – Bago jars, Chinese bowls and plates, a knife or two, an old beer bottle full of wild honey, a couple of wooden boxes—that is all. The spectacle that spreads beyond is of a purple lake, studded on its circumference with blue islands. The sunlight dances on the water, the sea hurtles very gently against the white sand, bees hum in the motionless air, and a bird pipes in the brake.

The Myanmar Andaman Sea is a dreamy soft and beautiful corner of the world, oceans away from everywhere. The shimmering heat plays before my drowsy eyes. . . . I turn with an effort to the realities about me.

The white sand is marked with the footprints of the colony. Its only representative stands half-cowed with fear, a deep, dull, suspicion lingering

in his eyes. He is a short, strong, black-skinned Salone man, with a sparse moustache and no beard, a loin-cloth and a bandana, both red.Leaving Bentinck Island and the Perforated rock, we steer directly for the Sisters. Andaman Islands bare as Sark lie upon our right, of fantastic form. One is like a Japanese eagle, another like a palace, a third is like a cathedral in the distance.

For the first time now we come upon a pearl diver, sweeping slowly with long oars along a

line of shadow, under the precipitous flanks of Maria, most northerly of the Sisters. These islands nearly all stand clean out of the water, and look as if they had no interiors but only summits to be climbed with difficulty.The first of the boats I see is the property of Olpherts the little clerk ; the second of the German Hertzog. The sea is placid as blue marble swaying with the first beat of life. Black rocks show their fangs in the sun, and deep pacific harbors lie between the islands. Between Maria and Elizabeth, where the rocks are strung in a line across the strait, there is a wonderful blaze of sea.

The pearl divers for pearl hunting are more numerous now between the  scattered islands on the sun-steeped ocean, and with the aid of the telelens I can tell if they are at work, from the dark figure of the life-line man erect at the stern.

As we gradually approach I find that four men on the primitive dive supply boat are working at the pump wheel, two with their hands and two with their feet. A man at the oar is slowly propelling the boat synchron with the buried pearl diver below, and two men stand silhouetted against the sky, one at the life, the other at the head-line ; the latter the tender and leader of the boat.

For a little space of time we wait, listening to the monotonous screeching of the wheel ; then the rope tightens, the tender hauls, a burst of bubbles is borne up in tumult to the surface, the tenders run swiftly together, and the pearl diver, like a strange beast hooked up from the sea-deeps, emerges and clings to the ladder over the side of the boat. And there he lies, bent over, the type of exhaustion.

The crew hasten to raise the helmet of the pearl diver, and lightened of its burden, he steps on deck, his startled head showing out of his monstrous clothes, his eyes blinking with the change from the deep sea floor to its sunlit surface. In a small brown net, like those which old ladies use in England when

In the boats, piles of shells opened with a big flat blade and peers as he opens the shells into their lustrous depths ; flinging the meat with its food of live red prawns into a bucket of water, which he afterwards searches with fingers skilled with usage. When he has gone tragically through the entire pile finding nothing, I descend with him into his cabin, garnished with bottles of sauce, a rusty tin containing a few pearls, an iron safe, an open shell with the mark on it of a rifled pearl, a pipe or two, a tin of " Navy Cut." For the coming of the Ship is a riddle to be solved. Meanwhile we lie at ease on the cabin roof, and get the launch to tow us to the other ship at anchor in the shelter of an island. They talk of a Salone camp assembled in the neighborhood, and as we go, I see their fleet of boats making away across the water, in the wake of a double-sailed Chinaman, who has come to trade and barter.

It is evening, the closing hour, and there is a general movement on the seas. The pearl dive supply boats are coming in to their rendezvous beside an island, the home of the edible-nest builder, which from its strange picturesque outline is a landmark to them all. It is nearly bare rock, but at its corners trees droop over the sides, like parasols, and it is so much like a Japanese picture, that I give it, in emulation of the worthy Captain Forrest, the name of 0 Mimosa San. The last pink of the sunset turns the space between the islands into sea-ways of exquisite color. Cliffs and precipices rise up about us, and in their shelter we anchor for the night. While we talk the pearl divers cleans and searches his shells by the lantern-light. Talks of ambergris, and whales, and pearl divers' risks ; of two recent deaths from the snapping of the tube (the life-tender hauled hand-over­hand, but not quick enough to save his man

Pearl Dive Supply Boats