Against the mizzen-mast stood a big water barrel with an iron mug on a chain. The deck immediately round was stained dark with spilt water.

Every now and then a diver struggled up and staggered along, sleep-drunk, to the water barrel. Never opening his eyes he swallowed a mugful and dropped down anywhere on his way back, as if it were not water he had drunk but neat spirit. The divers were always thirsty. They went without morning meals, for underwater pressure made diving on a full stomach dangerous, so they worked without eating all through the day, till it grew too dark underwater. They had their meal before turning in-and that was of salt meat.

The Indian Baltasar, right hand of the schooner’s owner Pedro Zurita, had the night watch.

In his time Baltasar had been known far and wide as an excellent pearl-diver. He could stay underwater for as much as a minute and a half or even two minutes which was about twice as long as an average diver.

“How did we do it? They knew how to train in my day and started early,” Baltasar would say to the young divers.

“Just turned ten I was. My father took me to Jose, who owned a tender, for training. There were twelve of us, all kids like me. And this is the way he trained us. He’d throw a white pebble or shell into the water and order one of us to go and get it. And each time he found deeper and deeper places. If one of us had nothing to show for his diving Jose’d give him a lash or two of his whip and shove Mm overboard to try again. And it worked. Then he started to train us to keep longer times underwater. An experienced diver’d go down and make a basket or piece of netting fast to the anchor chain. Then down we went to untie the knots. And we weren’t allowed to come up before all the knots were undone. If we did we got the whip again.