Not Schiller nor Edgar Allan Poe ever conjured up a picture more ghastly than that of a Penrhyn diver caught like a rat in a trap by some huge, man-eating shark or fierce kara mauua, crouching in a cleft of the overhanging coral, under the dark green gloom of a hundred feet of water, with bursting lungs and cracking eyeballs, while the threatening bulk of his terrible enemy looms dark and steady, full in the road to life and air. A minute or more has been spent in the downward journey; another minute has passed in the agonized wait under the rock.... Has he been seen?... Will the creature move away now, while there is still time to return? The diver knows to a second how much time has passed; the third minute is on its way; but one goes up quicker than one comes down, and there is still hope.... Two minutes and a half; it is barely possible now, but—the sentinel of death glides forward; his cruel eyes, phosphorescent in the gloom, look right into the cleft where the wretched creature is crouching, with almost twenty seconds of life still left, but now not a shred of hope. A few more beats of the laboring pulse, a gasp from the tortured lungs, a sudden rush of silvery air bubbles, and the brown limbs collapse down out of the cleft like wreaths of seaweed. The shark has his own. (Beatrice Grimshaw in the “Graphic.”) At the end of the day’s work, the catch is opened by means of a large knife, and carefully searched for the much prized pearls. Usually the fisherman finds none; occasionally he discovers a small round one or a large baroque, and at long intervals—possibly once in two or three years—his search is rewarded with a fine pearl for which he may receive $50 or $60, and there is always the chance that the very next oyster will disclose a gem which will make him independent for the remainder of his life; and if no pearls whatever are found, there are the shells, the sale of which furnishes sufficient to purchase tobacco, knives, fish-hooks, the gaudy cotton cloths, the flour and other simple articles of food, and especially rum, that fatal gift of civilization which has been the curse of so many primitive peoples.