teered to
change places with Cunningham and do a spell of shovelling: but the
engineer explained that he could take another turn below quite easily,
and proposed, as an amendment, that the boatswain should take on the
afternoon shift; and, this being arranged, he again descended and
resumed operations.

Then in due course there came a brief respite while everybody went to
dinner, half an hour being allowed for the meal, at the expiration of
which time operations went on uninterruptedly until about half an hour
before sunset, when we were perforce obliged to cease work, in order to
get the schooner back into the lagoon before nightfall. But we had done
not at all badly; for I had kept a rough--a very rough--account of the
number of oysters that had been brought to the surface that day, not
counting them, of course, but just estimating the number that had come
up in each net, and when I came to total up I found that, unless my
calculations were a long way out, we must have secured at least
twenty-five thousand oysters as a reward for our day's work.

But this by no means ended with the mooring of the schooner in the
lagoon, for when that was done there still remained the oysters to be
laid out in rows upon the southern extremity of the island; and we soon
found that the landing and laying of them out was a much more lengthy
process than the getting of them up from the sea bottom. Very
fortunately for us, we had arrived at the island when the moon was four
days old, and in that exquisitely clear atmosphere a moon of even that
age affords a very useful amount of light, of which we availed ourselves
to empty the boats and make all ready for the next day before finally
knocking-off work.

The next day was, with a rather notable exception, just a repetition of
the day which had preceded it. The weather was as fine, and matters
worked even more smoothly, for almost every hour revealed to us some
little improvement that might be made in our methods of work, which we
promptly adopted. Thus, for example, the boatswain having proved
himself to be quite an expert diver, it was arranged that Cunningham and
he should work spell and spell about, each man working two hours and
then taking two hours' complete rest. On this, our second day upon the
bank, Cunningham and the boatswain had each been down once, the dinner
hour had arrived and passed, and Cunningham was down again, working with
tremendous energy--for a friendly rivalry