Chapter 23

"_Aué!_" exclaimed the diver. "There is no other island like this! It is as Seroni told us--the bottom is covered with shell, and the water is not overdeep: twelve fathoms, by the knots on my line. Last year, at Hikueru, I worked at twenty till my head ached all through the night. And this shell--the size, the weight, the color of the lip--think of what it must be worth a ton! No man in all these islands has ever seen its like! I would still dive if there were fifty sharks instead of the one Seroni killed yesterday…