At length Tommy Rous’ boarders all departed. His health seemed to be somewhat better, for a while at any rate, and I felt that I could leave him with a clear conscience. As I was thoroughly sick both of prospecting for gold and hotel-keeping, I purchased the cutter Mizpah, and manned her with a crew of six Papuans, getting also the Resident Magistrate’s permission to arm them. At the same time I chartered from Messrs. Burns, Philp and Co. the luggers Ada, Hornet, and Curlew, fully equipped with diving plants and crews of Malays and Manilla men; and also engaged Billy the Cook, late of the Myrtle, to take charge of the three, bound under the guidance of the Mizpah, on a general prospecting voyage for pearl or mother-of-pearl anywhere in the Coral Sea, the latter commodity then having a value of about £150 per ton, with the chance—a very remote chance it is true—of valuable pearls being found in the shells. The Mizpah was fitted with a deep-sea dredging apparatus, having, prior to my purchase, been owned by a scientist, a Dr. Wylie, who had come to New Guinea, I was told, in search of the deep-sea nautilus.

Leaving Samarai we rapidly ran down to East Cape, when, coming to anchor, Billy came on board my boat to discuss a plan of action for my venture. At the very beginning Billy and I differed, to my future loss I must own; for had I taken his advice as then tendered, I should have made a fair profit instead of ending in a heavy loss. Billy’s advice was that we should proceed to an old pearling ground well known by him, and worked for many years, off the island of Sudest, and commence operations there, where we were certain to make a few hundreds in a short time. My idea was to search for an entirely new ground, where we might make many thousands in a few weeks, off the shores of Goodenough Island. Billy, finding that I was fixed in my views as to our procedure, persuaded me to wait several days at East Cape, fishing, and to send a boat into Samarai for salt to cure the fish.

We fished in this manner. Firstly, we stationed men at the masthead to view the approach of shoals of trevalli passing through the narrow channels, and then sent out boats to throw amongst them dynamite cartridges with a twenty-second fuse attached. The explosion of the cartridges stunned the fish, and enabled them to be raked in by the boys forming our crews. Secondly, we sent the divers down armed with small spears, and they speared the cod which had been attracted by the dead fish or the diver. The ordinary rock cod, groper, or more properly gorupa, has no fear of a diver in dress, and will swim up and gaze into the face glass of the helmet, and hence falls an easy victim to the spear. It is, however—with the exception of the octopus—the diver’s greatest enemy, from the same lack of fear. No real diver is afraid of the shark, but all dread the greater codfish.

The shark at best is a most cowardly scavenger of the sea; much preferring, even when hungry, to gorge on carrion than to kill its own prey. And even when made bold by hunger, it is readily frightened away by the sudden emission of air bubbles from the valve in the diver’s helmet. A diver, when approached by a large shark, seldom troubles much, so long as the fish does not get too near to his air pipe. He fears that, because sharks have an unpleasant habit of suddenly rolling over and snapping at a fairly quiescent object. Should a shark’s attention, however, prove too persistent, the diver signals for the fullest possible pressure of air, and then either walks towards the fish or, if it is higher up and interfering with his air pipe, rises in the water and suddenly turns on his valves; result, immediate flight of Mr. Shark.

The codfish, however, is afraid of nothing, and will nose up to a diver, smell round him until it discovers his naked hands, and then bite them off. Owing to this unpleasant trait on the part of the codfish, the first and important duty of a diver’s tender is to wash the former’s hands thoroughly with soap, soda, and warm water before he descends, in order to remove any trace of perspiration or grease from them. A diver’s hands are the sole portion of his body outside the diving suit, the dress ending at the wrists, where thick india-rubber bands prevent the admission of water and expulsion of air. Should a diver meet a large groper, the only thing to be done is to either ascend twenty or thirty feet and drift out of the short-sighted fish’s range of vision or, if there is no tide or current, rise to the surface. Then he can lower a dynamite cartridge or two, which will either kill, wound, or frighten the beast away. A groper, I have been told by divers, and my own experience bears this out, will never pursue a diver or leave the bottom; it is sluggish in the extreme. These fish grow to an immense size. I have myself seen a fish so large that, when his mouth was open, the lower jaw was on the bottom and the upper jaw above the level of one’s helmet. My own opinion is that, as the cachalot preys upon the larger, so the gropers prey upon the smaller form of octopi; otherwise I fail to see how so slow and bulky a fish, a fish too that is not a carrion feeder, can possibly catch enough food on which to live.

I have mentioned a diver’s tender. This person and the diver are usually engaged together, and in most cases have been close friends and associates through many engagements. The tender’s duties are to keep the air pumps, dress, pipes, etc., in apple-pie order, to hold the diver’s life-line and air tubes while he is below, and to receive his signals and communicate them to the master of the vessel. On this man’s constant watchfulness the life of the diver depends. At the time of which I write, all signals from a diver at work were conveyed by numbered jerks on the life-line. I believe now, however, the diver’s helmets are fitted with a telephone, through which he speaks direct to his tender. The submarine telephone must add immensely to the safety of the diver, for by its means he can explain exactly what he wants or what difficulty he is in.

For instance, I have known the case of a diver landing his leg in a large clam shell, which of course immediately closed upon it, the shell weighing probably three or four hundred pounds and being fastened to the bottom. The man signalled “pull up.” The tender passed on the signal, and after the life-line had been tugged and strained at for some time, ordered it and the pipe to be slacked under the impression that it was fast round a coral mushroom. The result was, that before another boat could be summoned and a second diver sent down to ascertain the trouble, the first man had exceeded his time limit and was stricken fatally with divers’ paralysis. Had the diver then possessed a telephone, a second line could have been sent down to him by a heavy iron ring slid down his own life-line, and by him have been attached to the shell; whereupon man and shell together could have been hoisted by the ship’s winch.

Having collected and salted our fish, we sailed away for Dawson Straits, between Ferguson and Goodenough Islands. My intention was to prospect the narrow sea lying between the latter island and the Trobriand group for pearl shell; the north-eastern coast of Goodenough Island was at this time merely marked on the Admiralty charts by a dotted line, with the terse remark, “Little known of the northern shores of these islands.” In Dawson Straits we drilled our crews for some days in their routine work, whilst I accustomed myself to the use of a diver’s dress. Billy the Cook, I regret to say, flatly refused to have anything to do with work under the water.

Our method of procedure was this. Firstly, by sounding, we found a level sandy bottom of anything under twenty fathoms. Pearl shell is peculiar for growing only on a perfectly flat surface. Then the vessel was hove-to or allowed to drift with the current, while the anchor was lowered some ten feet beneath the vessel’s keel. The diver then descended by the anchor chain, and seated himself astride of the anchor. At his signal it was lowered until within about six feet of the bottom, the vessel then being allowed to drift while the diver scrutinized the bottom for signs of pearl shell. Upon his sighting shell, he gave two sharp tugs at his life-line, which meant, “Slack life-line and pipe, let go anchor.” Immediately upon giving his signal and finding his life-line and pipe released, the diver leapt from the anchor, the anchor dropped, and he began work. For sign of shell it was sufficient to see certain marine plants, which almost invariably occur under the same conditions as pearl shell. The diver when below water is in supreme command of the vessel through his tender, and there can be no possible excuse for disobeying either his first or second signals. The first, consisting of one tug on his life-line, meaning “More air, I am in great danger, pull me up.” The second, of two tugs, meaning “Slack all, I am on shell.” One peculiar thing about pearl shell is, that it only occurs in payable quantities where tidal currents are very strong. Where the current runs at less than three knots, though one may find shell, it is rotten and worm-eaten; where the currents are strong it is clean and thick. My own impression is that a strong force of water is necessary to tear and distribute the spawn from the parent oyster; when that force is lacking disease and degeneracy set in.

There are many theories as to the causation of pearls in the pearl shell; the most common is the particularly idiotic one of a grain of sand, or other foreign body, inserting itself within the shell and setting up an irritation which causes the oyster to build round the intruder a smooth coat of pearly matter. This theory is senseless on the face of it. From its natural habitat every pearl oyster must have thousands of grains of sand or other bodies lodged against its lips in each tide. The lips of a pearl oyster consist of a curious vascular membrane tapering to a slimy filmy substance at the outer edge; assuming a small speck of sand came it would adhere to the slimy edge, if a larger body the lips would close. Granted that a foreign article passed the lips, the outer skin of the fish is a very tough thing, and it would be almost impossible for the grain of sand, or other matter, to penetrate to where lie the glands which secrete the substance forming the pearly lining of the shell. A fact which shows the fallacy of the theory is this: that though one may remove the multitudinous skins of the pearl until whittled down to nothing, it is impossible ever to discover in the centre of the pearl as a core a grain of sand, or anything differing from the pure composition of the pearl. If, in one chance out of ten millions, a grain of sand passed the lips of the shell and lodged on the skin of the fish, the next tide would wash it away again. No! Plainly, from the small percentage of pearl-bearing oysters, the pearl is a disease, and, I hold, not due to extraneous causes. Just as uric acid produces stone or gravel in humans, so does some similar irritant produce the pearl in the oyster. I leave it to other and wiser heads to say what the origin of the pearl is; I only say emphatically what it is not.

In Dawson Straits we remained some days prospecting the bottom without luck, and meanwhile discovered a passage behind the island of Wagipa to a secure anchorage for small vessels. Here the Mizpah lay for some days while the luggers continued prospecting, and here I had my first experience of hostile natives. The natives of Goodenough Island at this time enjoyed a most unenviable reputation, being generally regarded by traders as hostile and treacherous in the extreme. Until the day of which I now write, we had not come into contact with them, save a few canoes manned by vegetable-vending natives.

On this day, being tired of sticky salt-water baths, I landed with three or four of my crew, and followed a small stream inland to where a waterfall occurred in a gully. Here the falling water had scooped out a hole about three or four feet deep. Sending my boys back to the mouth of the gully I stripped and, standing in the hole, indulged in a shower bath under the fall. Whilst I was so engaged, revolver and rifle lying on my clothes some few feet away, a native walked out from the bush, suddenly caught sight of me and, giving a loud screech, promptly hurled his spear at me and then fled. I jumped from the water hole as the spear flew, and instead of catching me in the chest it caught me just above the knee, fortunately just as my knee was jerking upwards in my jump, the spear therefore turning to one side, and merely tearing a slit in my flesh and skin, the scar of which, however, I carry to this day. My yells brought up my boys, who running straight into the flying native, caught and held him. As soon as my bleeding was staunched, we hauled him off on board the Mizpah, where we found that he had a slight knowledge of Dobuan, a language with which one of my crew was acquainted. After we had soothed down his funk a little (for he fully expected to be immediately killed and eaten, as the Goodenough Islanders were themselves cannibals), he was asked what he meant by hurling his spear at me. His explanation was that he was returning from an expedition inland, that he had never seen a white man before, and when he saw me disporting in the water he had taken me for a devil, and flung his spear with the laudable intention of killing a devil before turning to flee from the uncanny thing.

Satadeai was the name of my new acquaintance, a man whose friendship I was to enjoy for many years afterwards; in fact, when later I became Resident Magistrate of the Eastern Division, I appointed him village constable for his tribe, a dignity which I believe he still enjoys. After we had soothed the feelings of Saturday, as I now called him, I presented him with some beads and a tomahawk and landed him again; telling him at the same time what our quest in the vicinity was, and offering him safe conduct at any time he or his people liked to come with vegetables for our little fleet. From this time Saturday became a regular visitor to the Mizpah, bringing fresh yams, taro, curios, etc., for sale; and also bringing me men to assist in working the air pumps of the diving plant, a manual labour of the heaviest description when divers are in deep water.

On one occasion he brought me as a present a curious, almost circular, tusk, a tusk so old that the outer covering of enamel had worn off and antiquity had tinged it a pale yellow. The tusk was mounted in native money, small circular disks formed from the hinges of a rare shell, and hung on a sling to be worn round the neck. I thought the thing was an ordinary boar’s tusk of unusual shape and size; Saturday, however, told me the following amazing yarn. He said that at the summit of Goodenough Island, or Moratau, as the natives called it, there lived an enormous snake with curious long and curved teeth, a snake so large and powerful that it was beyond the power of man to capture or destroy it. Goodenough Island, I might remark in passing, is the highest island of its size in the world; Mount York, its highest peak, being over 8000 feet. Well, some generations before, there had lived on Goodenough a mighty hunter of Saturday’s tribe and family, and on one occasion the hunter had ascended the mountain with the intention of killing the snake. Finding, however, that it was beyond the powers of mortal man to slay, he had surrounded its lair with sharp-pointed stakes driven firmly into the ground. When the snake emerged again, it had entangled or caught one of its curved tusks on a stake, and in its struggles to escape tore away the tusk, which Saturday now presented to me.

Afterwards in New Zealand I showed the tooth to Sir James Hector, who pronounced it to be a tusk of the Sus Barbirusa, a hog deer; an inhabitant of the East India Islands and an animal not known to exist in New Guinea. This tusk I afterwards gave to a friend of mine, Richard Burton of Longner Hall, Shrewsbury, in whose possession it now is; a gift that later caused me to be severely dealt with by Professor Haddon of anthropological fame, the professor holding that I should have presented it either to the Royal Anthropological Institute or the British Museum. I am now of opinion that this tusk was wrongly assigned by Sir James Hector to the Barbirusa, but rightfully belongs to an animal not then known to science, though many years later reported by me as existing on the Owen Stanley Range, at a height of about 12,000 feet, on the mainland of New Guinea. The discovery of this animal and its description, however, occurs at a later stage of my life in New Guinea.

When we sailed from Wagipa, Saturday accompanied me on the Mizpah to the north-east coast of Goodenough Island, where he acted as interpreter for us. And being by this time fully acquainted with the object of our search, he induced the natives to guide us to a large patch of “saddle back” shell, which he and they assured us contained large quantities of the “stones” we valued. He was right in his statement, the shell was there in large quantities, and the shells held—a most unusual thing—large numbers of perfect-looking pearls. But, alas! the shell, for some unknown reason, was so soft as to be valueless, one could crush it between the hands; and the pearls, though beautiful to look upon when first obtained, lost their lustre in a single day and could be readily scratched with the finger nail. Saturday was the only New Guinea native that I ever knew who was anxious to go down in a diving dress, a wish on his part to which I sternly refused to accede.

The Goodenough Islanders are a somewhat remarkable race; of small physique, they speak a language peculiar to themselves; the men are liars, treacherous and subtle, but at the same time brave and capable of great attachment to any person for whom they have a regard. Some time after I first saw them, the small wiry men from Goodenough Island proved to be the best porters that New Guinea could furnish for the deadly work of carrying for the Northern Division. The common arms of the men were half a dozen light throwing spears, made from the black palm and having an effective throwing range of some thirty yards, a short triangular-bladed spear for use at close quarters, and a sling and stones. As a general rule ordinary pebbles of about the size of a billiard ball were hurled from the slings; but the slinger usually carried a couple of carefully hand-wrought stones resembling a pullet’s egg in shape but pointed at both ends, which he flung from his sling on special occasions; that is, at times when he had a good clear opportunity of hitting his enemy, and wished to make no mistake about it. The effective range of these slings was up to two hundred yards on the level. They had an extraordinary habit of attaching a tail or cracker to the pouch of the sling, which, upon the stone leaving the pouch, made a sharp noise not unlike the crack of a rifle.

In their hill villages, usually placed upon commanding points or spurs, they build round stone towers covering all approaches. The purpose of the towers was this. A man when using a sling on the level could only use it at such a length as to reach, when whirled, from the bent arm to the ground. If standing on a flat-sided tower, however, the limit of the length of sling he could use was only decided by his strength and the weight of the missile he meant to hurl; and the greater the length of the sling and weight of projectile, the greater the effective range. Therefore a village possessing stone towers was, to all intents and purposes, a fortified position, as its slingmen could outrange, and assail with heavier missiles, any attacking force armed with the sling. Stones from a pound to a pound and a half in weight were hurled from the giant slings plied by the slingers on the towers. Goodenough Islanders, therefore, provided with the towers, were really, at the time of which I write, impregnable against any force unarmed with rifles. They also had a most extraordinary system of yam cultivation. Instead of making their yam gardens on the flat in good alluvial soil, they built circular stone walls beneath their villages on the slopes; and then laboriously carried earth in baskets and filled up the walls behind, until they formed a succession of artificial terraces on which they grew their yams. Certainly the yams there grown were larger and better than any others I have seen, but the labour in the first instance must have been appalling. The gardens also had the advantage of being covered by sling fire from the village towers, and therefore, I suppose, were held to be safe from raiders. Lunacy, from what I could learn, was very common among these islanders; I believe due to in-breeding for many years. Totemism, the great preventive against in-breeding, apparently did not exist among them.

South from Wagipa, on the northern shores of Ferguson Island, lies Seymour Bay, a short distance inland from which there exists a country of great volcanic and thermal action. There, a hot stream flows to the sea; and there also exists a lake containing, according to an analysis I had made of its waters, a huge quantity of the gouty man’s friend, lithium; whilst, surrounding its waters, there are acres and acres, feet deep, of pure yellow sulphur.

My pearl fishing on the northern shores of Goodenough came to an abrupt end. Billy the Cook had foregathered with me one night on the Mizpah, when our divers and tenders had asked permission to collect on one boat, the Ada, for a Malay jollification; the crew of the Ada meanwhile visiting friends on the other vessels. When morning came there was no Ada, and no divers or tenders; and Billy gently suggested to me that they had taken a pleasure trip to the Trobriands. The first thing to be done before we could sail in search of our truants was to return Saturday to his home on Wagipa, as the law did not then permit any unindentured natives being taken more than twenty miles from where they lived, except for the purpose of being indentured, or as it is called “signed on.” Saturday made it very clear indeed that if we landed him at the point at which we were then, the chances were greatly in favour of his finding his way into a cooking pot instead of his home. It would not do to send the Hornet with him, because, firstly, the crew were only armed with knives, and secondly, they were quite likely to follow the evil example of their mates and sneak off on pleasure bent. I thought of sending Billy in the Curlew with a couple of armed boys, he having his own rifle and revolver; but my boys objected to leaving my own vessel, and Billy said he was a married man and had not shipped to be sent alone into a Goodenough harbour. Also he pointed out that I might require the full strength of my New Guinea boys, the only men I could depend on, to deal with our confounded divers and tenders when we found them. The result of our deliberations, therefore, was the loss of two valuable days in returning Saturday.

Upon landing that worthy native we struck straight away from the Straits to the Trobriands, and had a horrible nightmare of a passage, for coral mushrooms and reefs seemed to strew the sea like plums in a pudding. Safe enough to navigate amongst when the sky was clear, they were, however, a deadly peril during the passage of a rain squall. The danger of a coral mushroom lies in the fact that it is so small that the sea seldom makes any noise upon it, also it springs up so suddenly from the bottom that the lead line proves no safeguard against it. No bottom at fifty fathoms one minute, a nigger head or mushroom with its head a couple of feet below the surface the next, is the pleasing habit of the sea between Goodenough Island and the Trobriands.

We did not attempt to sail at night, but either anchored over a submerged reef or hung on to the lee side of a shallow one, with our anchor on top of the reef and a kedge out astern. It is a risky proceeding anchoring in small vessels among coral, where the depth of the water is more than six fathoms, if unprovided with diving gear, or more than twenty, if fitted with that apparatus. For in nine cases out of ten, the chain or anchor becomes entangled in the coral mushrooms, and it is necessary for a man to go down and clear it before the anchor can be raised. Sometimes even a diver is unable to clear the tangle, especially if there is much current or wind keeping the vessel straining at her anchor; and in that case the last resource is to heave the chain in until it is up and down—that is, descends in a vertical line from the ship’s bow to the bottom—and fasten big charges of dynamite fitted with burning fuses to a heavy iron ring, and slide them down the chain in the hope of smashing away the obstruction. Even this method sometimes fails, as some coral is of a dense cheesy consistency, and capable of resisting for a long time repeated explosions of dynamite. When this occurs, then one loses a valuable anchor and chain, a loss one cannot afford too often.