cember
28, 1892, it was interdicted altogether with a view to preserving the
industry to the natives, as it represents their principal means of
livelihood. The suit commonly employed at Penrhyn consists of a helmet
and a jumper, neither boots nor trousers being worn. Owing to the
absence of weights on the feet, it rarely but nevertheless sometimes
happens that a diver turns upside down, and the unwieldy helmet keeps
him head downward while the air rushes out under the bottom cord of the
jumper and he is suffocated. Also, when a good patch of shells has been
located, the temptation to remain down too long is great, and paralysis
often results. On the whole, these diving-suits have proven very
dangerous to the light, graceful swimmers of these southern seas, to
whom they are about as much of an impediment as was Saul's armor to the
shepherd lad who slew the giant with the simple pebble from a sling.
And
there are dangers also in nude diving, even to those who have spent a
lifetime about the water. Sharks and sting-rays and devil-fish there
are in abundance, and many of them know the taste of diver's flesh ; on
the other hand many a daring South Sea Islander could tell of a fierce
combat more thrilling than even those pictured by Victor Hugo. One of
the chief advantages of the diving-suit is that in case a shark comes
along, the diver can bide his time until the fish is ready to leave, or
he can frighten it away by ejecting air bubbles from the sleeve of his
suit or by other demonstrations ; whereas a nude diver is obliged to
seek the air without delay, and in the retreat is seized by the fish
who, human like, has his appetite increased by the visible retreat of
the object of his desire.
Not
Schiller nor Edgar Allan Poe ever conjured up a picture more ghastly
than that of a Penrhyn diver caught like a rat in a trap by some huge,
man-eating shark or fierce kara mauua, crouching in a cleft of the
overhanging coral, under the dark green gloom of a hundred feet of
water, with bursting lungs and cracking eyeballs, while the threatening
bulk of his terrible enemy looms dark and steady, full in the road to
life and air. A minute or more has been spent in the downward journey ;
another minute has passed in the agonized wait under the rock. . . .
Has he been seen? . . . Will the creature move away now, while there is
still time to return? The diver knows to a second how much time has
passed ; the third minute is on its way ; but one goes up quicker than
one comes down, and there is still hope. . . . Two minutes and a half;
it is barely possible now, but—the sentinel of death glides forward;
his cruel eyes, phosphorescent in the gloom, look right into the cleft
where die wretched creature is crouching, with almost twenty seconds of
life still left, but now not a shred of hope. A few more beats of the
laboring pulse, a gasp from the tortured lungs, a sudden rush of
silvery air bubbles, and the brown limbs collapse down out of the cleft
like wreaths of seaweed. The shark has his own. (Beatrice Grimshaw in
the "Graphic")
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