by some queer kink of piety it is the interval of time that ensures preservation, and not the actual prayers.
It
is strange that among the Catholic Christians, if a diver happens to
see two shadows form a cross he will refuse to do anything at all,
saying that the omen presages evil for him: and it needs someone with
authority in his boot to send superstition flying overboard with the
diver, both leaden heeled. Even so, if any mishap befall crew or lugger
for a week after, all is ascribed to the malign influence of the
cruciform shadow.
Most
poetical of pearl-superstitions is the belief of the Malay divers that
somewhere on the sea's floor is an Ancient of the Oysters, who rules
the tribe of pearl-givers and whom they obey blindly. He knows when the
pearling-fleet is out, but because it was ordained from the beginning
that Man should be master over all living things, he cannot save all
his flock. Yet he is enabled to preserve the best by burying them deep
in the sands of the sea-bottom until all danger is past.
And
the Moros of the Sulu Isles declare that pearls are but the breath of
Allah, the Merciful, the Compassionate, given to comfort the lonely
oyster in the dark and silent waters. But since they are practical
Moslems, they also assert that no other than the Faithful have a right
to garner the breath of Allah from the seas which wash their shores.
Taboo
also has its place here. I knew a very avaricious native of Sulu who
refused to profit from a certain pearl-deal in spite of much pressure
from his friends, because he had lost a son on one of the luggers
involved; pearls had become taboo to him.
But,
of course, it is not only the native pearl-divers who are
superstitious. A modicum of education and contact with a wider world do
not apparently free men from the desire for propitiating the unknown.
Even the pearl-merchants who throng the great markets of Europe and
America share this form of mental enslavement with the primitive
lugger-crews and the divers who gather the harvest of the sea-bottom.
There was, for instance, a certain Polish pearl-merchant who, however cheaply he bought, could never find a satisfac-
