ISLANDS OF THE PACIFIC 195
the
air slowly through his mouth. After five or six minutes of "taking the
wind," the diver inhales a good breath, drops over the gunwale into the
water to give him a start, and descends feet foremost. At a distance
of twelve or fifteen feet below the surface, gracefully as an otter or
a seal, he bends forward and turns head downward and, with limbs
showing dimly in frog-like motion, he swims vertically the remaining
distance to the bottom. There he assumes a horizontal position and
swims slowly just above the ground, searching critically for suitable
oysters, in this way traversing a distance possibly of fifty feet or
more. When he has secured an oyster, or his breath is approaching
exhaustion, he springs from the ground in an erect position and
rapidly swims upward, the buoyancy of his body hastening his ascent so
that he pops head and shoulders above the surface, and falls back with
laboring pulse and panting breath. In case the dive has been unusually
extended, a few drops of blood may trickle from the nose and mouth. His
find—consisting frequently of nothing and rarely of more than one
oyster—is carried in a cocoanut fiber sack suspended from the neck, or
is held in the left hand, or may be hugged beneath the left arm.
Ordinarily
in actual fishing operations, the fishermen do not descend to greater
depths than fifteen fathoms, and remain from sixty to ninety seconds.
Writing in 1851, a trader who had spent several years in collecting
pearls and pearl shells among the Tuamotus stated : "I timed several by
the watch, and the longest period I knew any of them to keep beneath
the water was a minute and a quarter, and there were only two who
accomplished this feat. Rather less than a minute was the usual
duration. It is unusual for them to attempt deep diving; and let the
shells be ever so abundant, they will come up and swear there are none."1
However,
in mutual contests or in special exhibitions, reports of twenty,
twenty-three, and even twenty-five fathoms are numerous, and they have
repeatedly been timed two and a half to three minutes.
Bou-chon-Brandely speaks of a woman at Anaa, one of the Tuamotus, who
would go down twenty-five fathoms and remain three minutes under water.2
This seems very unusual, but there are numerous reports of two and a
half minutes at about seventeen or eighteen fathoms. In October, 1899,
at Hikueru Island, another of the Tuamotu group, a young native made an
exhibition dive for the officers of the United States Fish Commission
steamship Albatross. He reached bottom at a depth of 102 feet
under the boat's keel, and remained submerged two minutes and forty
seconds. The water was so transparent
