"It is not difficult," the diver remarked, smiling at my efforts to question him in his own tongue. "If he would take the trouble, the white man could learn as well as we. But one must know how. You say that at six fathoms your head ached and your lungs were bursting. That was because you tired yourself by swimming down instead of letting a weight pull you to the bottom. And perhaps you held all of your breath until you rose--that is wrong. First of all, you must learn never to tire yourself beneath the water, and not to fill your lungs too full before you start. When your time is half up, you must begin to let the air out of your lungs, little by little,--a few bubbles now and then,--so that, as you reach the top, there will be scarcely any air left in you. If your ears ache, swallow; or hold your nose and blow--this will clear the little passages between your nose and ears, and stop the pain. That is all, except that in deep water you must never look up, nor bend your body backward. As for the sharks, there is little danger--not one in a hundred will do you harm. When that one comes, you will know him by the way he swims, and if there is sand or mud on the bottom, you can escape by throwing it up to cloud the water while you pull yourself quickly up the basket-rope. Otherwise you can only take refuge in a crevice of the coral, hoping that the shark will leave you before your lungs go flat. Conger eels are more to be feared; you must watch sharply as you pass the holes where they lie hidden. The big eel's jaws are like the jaws of a dog! If a conger seizes wrist or ankle, it is useless to struggle--ten strong men could not drag one from his hole. Three times, when I was young and careless, I have felt the teeth of the eel; see--my ankles bear the scars to this day. But I remembered what the old men had told me and lay quietly without struggling, till the conger relaxed his jaws to dart forward for a better hold. Each time I tore my ankle free and reached the surface with only the loss of a little blood. But we must get to work--the others are beginning to dive." The canoes returned to camp in mid-afternoon. The women were waiting to begin their task of cleaning shell, and there were exclamations of wonder as the day's catch was brought ashore. While the men went off to rest, their wives and daughters sat gossiping in little groups, hammering, chipping, and washing the mother-of-pearl. Half of the catch of each canoe had been set aside as my uncle's share, and some of his own people--Ivi, Ofai, and a few men and women from the settlement on Iriatai--set to work to clean it in a space reserved for them. I saw a number of women along the beach, filling the tins from the canoes with sea water, mashing the soft meat between their fingers, and pouring off the mess little by little, as they searched for any pearls that might have been overlooked. My uncle was delighted with the first day's work.