Good divers go very deep, the most famous can touch bottom at twelve and even fifteen fathoms, and can stay under for seven or nine minutes, but these are rare, the majority not surpassing four and five minutes, which is very pretty. The mated divers keep on by turns until they have brought up the requisite quantity of oysters. Their gains are miserable, and those whom captain Gladsden engaged were delighted to get a dollar a dozen. Many a shell has to be opened before any pearls are found; ten or twelve per cent is a good proportion for the enriched ones, and then again, many pearls are far from valuable. The basis of the estimation is the orient, as much as to say the lustre of the concentric layers, the "water," the roundness, and the size. Those worth a couple of thousand dollars are found on the South American coast, and still more seldom in "the Sea of Cortes," where we now are.
Whilst the hired Indians were engaged at this submarine toil, Benito and the two red men, old acquaintances of his, who would not have engaged themselves to another master, were searching the water at the side of the brigantine first, and latter, farther and farther away, accompanied by the yawl, two men pulling so that the two red men could rest calmly till they relieved the Mexican at the watery work.
For a time there was a growing belief that Ignacio's brother had lied, or that the chest had been burst by the waters churned up by the _temporal_, as is named the terrible wind, the West Coast counterpart for "the Norther" of Texas, or, at the best, moved it away into deep water. But Benito and his copper acolytes were expert in judging the aquatic "signs," and soon pronounced that the bluish tint that denoted a pearl oyster bed, showed a bright bar from a break in its continuity. The chest had dragged, but was not lost. Within an hour, all three divers being down at once, the old Indian came up and uttered a joyous shout on expelling his breath. He had a fragment of tarry rope. Next, Benito struck the trail, and came up crying, as soon as he could speak, that he had discovered the chest, the buoys had been eaten away by marine creatures on the tooth of time, and the treasure coffer had sunk, crushing into an oyster bed. The wounded oysters had exuded their pearly fluid and coated the strange object beautifully, and the shellfish had settled on it, but there it was in its lustrous and lovely mantle.