Read "The Pearl Divers and Crusoes of the Sargasso Sea" by Gordon Stables online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Three months and over had passed and gone, and though, during at least six weeks of this time, there were violent storms of rain and thunder, that seemed to shake the island to its very foundation, still the fishing went merrily on.
The dark-skinned natives were paid with cloth, beads, and tobacco. Money they despised.
The whole bottom of that deep lagoon was bedded inches deep with pearl oysters; and the savages worked like Trojans, seeming never to tire.
Their drink was the water found in the young cocoa-nuts. While still green, these contain about a pint and a half of pure water that tastes like iced milk. At this time the nut contains no kernel, only a little delicious transparent jelly sticking around the shell.
Our boys went constantly down in their divers' suits, and could remain comfortably below a long time, and fill their bags, while the natives could stay but little over a minute.
Our young heroes were permitted to keep all the pearls they found, and many were very valuable.
But diving was not unattended with danger, for in the lagoon were not only sharks -- huge and awful monsters -- but great, ungainly, horrid alligators.
Somehow they never dared attack the boys or Antonio in the diver's dress.
The savages used to dive together in parties of six to ten, and they were then unmolested by the tigers of the sea.
One day a young brave, probably to give himself éclat with the pretty, dark-skinned maidens who stood watching on the beach, took his spear and dived alone.
Two minutes slipped away. He came not to the surface, but dark red blood and bubbles soon rose up and revealed his fate -- torn in pieces by sharks or alligators.
This episode was soon forgotten.
The girls grinned and laughed.
"Plenty good 'gator," one said who had learned a little English. "Plenty good 'gator.[9] I lubee he. He one good man -- he lub de _bukalo_ feast. Num! num! num!"
And she licked the back of her hand with a species of cannibalistic frenzy that made Barclay Stuart shudder.
Some of these interesting maidens smiled and pointed to the boys, and even nodded to them.
"They've fallen in love with you," said Antonio, smiling.
Antonio was not half so weird-looking now that he had discharged that uncanny eye.
"In love," cried Barclay; "I would not sweetheart one of those girls for all the gold in Queensland."
"Oh," continued Antonio, "that isn't the kind of love they love you with. They want to broil and eat you, dearie."