I was beginning to see the oysters now: my eyes were growing accustomed to the dim light. This time I managed to tear off a couple of oysters and put them in the basket before I rose for air. Three dives filled the basket, and when Marama pulled it from the water with its coral-encrusted load, I gave an imitation of the exultant native shout--a cry which brought a grin to my companion's face. "We are learning," he said mockingly, "but it will be time to shout when we can fill the basket at one dive!" That afternoon, when we joined the little fleet of canoes to paddle home, Maruia stood up, craning her neck for a look at our catch. "You have done well," she remarked, a smile wrinkling her brown face, "not badly for the first day's diving! I have seen grown men do worse. No pearls? Never mind--you will find them surely. Beginners always have the luck!" From that day onward the fishing occupied less than a third of our time, and the balance was put in on the lagoon. We learned fast, as boys do, and gradually worked our way into deeper water till we were diving with the rest. Within a few weeks we were bringing in as much shell as the Paumotans, and my uncle was enthusiastic over our success! He could dive with any native, and once or twice, when he had leisure, he sent Marama out alone to fish and accompanied me to the diving-grounds. On those days my uncle's share of the shell went to the native boy's account--growing into a round little sum. As for me, the diving fascinated me more each day: the beauty and strangeness of the underwater world; the spice of danger--small, but a reality, nevertheless; the thought of the money I was earning; the daily, even hourly, hope of finding a rich pearl, perhaps worth a small fortune. From time to time we found a few small pearls, but when at last good fortune came to us, it came hand in hand with tragedy. As the nearer shell-patches became worked out, the canoes moved gradually northward, taking the cream of the shell without diving enough to exhaust the beds at any one place. One morning, in the latter part of July, Marama and I anchored close beside Maruia's canoe, on new and very promising grounds. It was my turn to open shell. The Paumotan woman, not ten yards away from me, was loafing that day--letting her nephew dive, for once. Teura was a boy of twenty or twenty-one, a favorite among the natives because of his skill as a musician and his jokes. I had grown fond of him since we had been thrown with the divers, and often went ashore in the evening to chat with old Maruia and listen to her nephew's songs, accompanied by wild native airs on his accordion.