Pearls by Colin Falconer

would be a blessed relief to get into the water.
    Wes helped him into the tough canvas diving dress, the cuffs at the ankles and wrists well greased. Then came the heavy lead-soled boots and the great copper corselet that fitted over the top of the suit, attached to the canvas with butterfly nuts.
    'Hokkay?' Wes said.
    It was as much as he could do to stand up. His knees buckled under the weight of the corselet. He thought he was going to faint from the heat. He lumbered to the gunwale, desperate to get into the water. He knew Cameron and Simeon, his number one, were watching him.
    I must not fail, he thought. I have to find bags and bags of shell. No more begging.
    He stepped over the rope ladder and paused while Wes hung the heavy lead weights down his back and over his chest, then checked and re-checked his air pipe and lifeline. Finally he picked up the heavy sea-greened copper helmet and placed it over his head. Wes screwed the face glass into place.
    Suddenly he was no longer part of the world of light and clear sound. The hissing of the air filling his suit echoed around inside the cavernous helmet; the smells of salt and diesel and fish were abruptly cut off.
    He balled his fists tight around the rope ladder to stop them shaking and steeled himself for the coming ordeal. He stepped off the ladder and into the ocean.
    At first the air in his suit held him upright in the water. Then he remembered he had to adjust the large air valve screw on the outside of his helmet. He closed it down with his right hand and sank in an explosion of bubbles into another world.
     
    ***
     
    Siosuki stood on the sandy bottom both mesmerised by the beauty of what he saw around him. He was on a wide underwater plain, the sea grass waving with the current like wheat in a field. A cliff loomed from the murky green ahead of him, clusters of sponges in soft pinks and aquamarine growing up the vertical walls.
    Red and white angel fish darted in and out of the shadowed grottoes. A sentinel fish peered out at him behind the waving tendrils of an underwater plant.
    For a moment he was transfixed by this alien world. The dismal green light and the strange murky cliffs horrified him. His hand tightened around the lifeline. One tug and they would haul him up, back to safety.
    I must force my way past this fear, he thought. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life standing behind the counter in your uncle's shop! You must think only about the shell.
    He took a few faltering steps and, finding nothing, tugged on the line and gave the command to drift.
     
    ***
     
    But finding shell was not as easy as he thought. There were none down here, not a single one! He searched the reef and cliff face without finding anything. In no time Wes signalled that it was time to come up and when he came out of the water there was not a single shell in the string bag at his waist. No one said anything to him as Wes helped him out of his suit. Afterwards he sat down alone by the mast, smoking a cigarette, ignoring Wes' whispered words of consolation.
    Simeon was already on the bottom and had sent up his first full bag of shell. Twice more Siosuki went down and twice more came up empty-handed. In that time Simeon had added three more full bags to his pile.
    The sun was getting low in the sky when he went down for his final dive. He was oblivious to the strange green world around him now, out of his mind with frustration and rage at his own failure. He must at least find one shell. Just one!
    He drifted from cliff to cliff, searching desperately. Suddenly he saw something glinting among the weed to his right. It was there for only a moment, like a mirror flashing in the sun, and then was gone. He lumbered towards it.
    It was a pearl oyster, a big one. It had opened its shell for a moment to feed and what Siosuki had seen was the mother of pearl sheen inside the shell. The outside was so encrusted with weed and sea plants that otherwise he would never have spotted