one in the morning
This process they continued for something over an hour , until the boats were about half-full , and the time had arrived for them to return to the island . The return journey was uneventful , except in so far as it showed them that the boats were loaded quite as deeply as was desirable for the safe negotiation of that part of the passage which lay to windward of the atoll ; and when once they were safely inside the lagoon , they proceeded straight to the spot already chosen by them for the purpose , and discharged their cargoes into the shallow basin of rock . This afternoon 's haul amounted to some thousands of oysters , but they now saw that the basin was sufficiently capacious to accommodate at least a fortnight 's catch , reckoning upon the basis of their afternoon 's work . On the following day the same party again went out , making two trips to the shoal , one in the morning , and one in the afternoon , thus continuing for a fortnight , by which time their saucer-like depression in the rock was full , while about half of the entire catch was in a sufficiently advanced stage of decomposition to admit of being examined and the pearls abstracted therefrom . This , as will be supposed , was a most disgusting and intensely disagreeable task , but the returns were so unexpectedly rich that the revolting character of the work was quickly lost sight of in the interest with which discovery after discovery was made of pearls that , for size , shape , and purity of colour , promised to prove priceless . Their first day 's work among the putrid fish resulted in their taking on board at night an ordinary ship 's bucket nearly half-full of pearls , a considerable proportion of which might be ranked as specially valuable . The proportion of seed pearls was singularly small , and , toward the close of the second day 's work , was considered of so little value , comparatively , as to be not worth the time and trouble of collecting .