Each canoe was equipped with its paddles, an anchor at the end of thirty fathoms of line, a five-gallon kerosene-tin, a stout knife, and two coils of light rope--one attached to the diving-weight, the other to a large openwork basket of bamboo. The two members of the crew shared equally in the catch, though almost without exception one man did all the diving while his partner remained at the surface, raising and lowering the basket, cleaning the shell roughly, opening the oysters and inspecting them for pearls. As they worked no more than five hours a day, we did not leave camp till the sun was well up, illuminating the bottom of the lagoon. I went out with a pair of middle-aged Paumotans whose acquaintance I had made during the passage from Raiatea. It was about half a mile from the islet to the patch of shell on which work was to begin. Uncle Harry had gone out ahead of us in the whaleboat and as the little fleet of canoes drew near, he pointed out to the paddlers the two acres of lagoon in which they were to work. The bow-man in our canoe dropped anchor in about seventy feet of water, and began to prepare himself to dive. First of all, he stripped off the cotton shirt he had been wearing and hitched the pareu tight about his waist. Then he polished his water goggles, adjusted them carefully over his eyes, and thrust his right hand into a heavy working-glove. A pile of coral lumps, picked up on the beach the night before, lay in the bottom of the canoe; the stern-man placed a couple of these in the basket and lowered it into the lagoon till it came to rest on the bottom. Then the diver went over the side and lay in the water with a hand on the gunwale of the canoe, while his partner coiled the diving-line and lowered the leaden weight till it hung a few feet beneath the surface. The man in the water gripped the line with his left hand and the toes of his left foot; he took two or three long breaths before he jerked his head upward in a sudden gesture that meant: "Let go!" Coil after coil of line went leaping overboard, as the diver sank like a stone, leaving a trail of bubbles in his wake. When the lead touched bottom the stern-man hauled it up at once, coiling the line in readiness for the next dive.