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He once agreed, and we commenced our preparations without delay in Batavia. Now when a pearler engaged a crew of native divers there in those days, he had to deposit beforehand with the Dutch Government a certain sum for each man entering his service, this money being a guarantee that the man would get his wages.
I had not been many days in that place when, chancing to make inquiries at a store kept by a Mr. Shakespeare, I was casually introduced to a Dutch pearl-fisher named Peter Jensen. Although I describe him as a Dutch pearler I am somewhat uncertain as to his exact nationality.
"Davidson mentioned to her that Harry the Pearler had been dead now for some years. Perhaps she had heard? "She made a sign that she had heard; and walked by the side of Davidson in silence nearly to the bank. Then she told him that her meeting with him had brought back the old times to her mind. She had not cried for years. She was not a crying woman either.
Coincidence is a strange thing. I can point to a dozen in my short life, every one as remarkable, if not as startling, as this. Here, I'll spin you a yarn: "It happened four years ago. I had no moustache then, was fat like a whale, and first mate on the 'Dancing Kate', a pearler in the Indian Ocean, between Java and Australia.
Dudley had disappeared; but in one of her letters, Meg, writing from her Australian farm, says: 'There's a fella in toon as calls hisself Colbroke, wi' a good hoose o' wood, 15 foot length, and as by 'bout as silling o' the pearler o' Bartram only lots o' rats, they do say, my lady a bying and sellin' of goold back and forred wi' the diggin foke and the marchants.
Next came the letter, which Cleigh did not read aloud it was not necessary. With what variant emotions the three pairs of eyes leaped from word to word! Friend Buccaneer: Of course I found the shell. That was the one issue which offered no odds. The shell lay in its bed peculiarly under a running ledge. The ordinary pearler would have discovered it only by the greatest good luck.
"What a meeting eh? Bamtz had sent her out to see what white man it was who had landed. And she had recognised him from that time when Davidson, who had been pearling himself in his youth, had been associating with Harry the Pearler and others, the quietest of a rather rowdy set.
Past the bust of Bougainville, past the offices of Emile Levy, the pearler whom, to Levy's intense anger, Jack London slew in "The House of Mapuhi"; past the naval depot, the American consulate with the red, white, and blue flung in the breeze; the Commissariat de Police, the pool of Psyche, and all the rows of schooners that line the quays, with their milken sails drying on their masts, and I am by the stores of the merchants.
Once out at sea, however, they would be absolutely at the mercy of the captain, and he could treat them just as he pleased. The first thing they did before coming aboard was to look at the name for themselves. No doubt they knew the reputation of every pearler.
There's more than one old bucket hereabouts ready to his hand for coal and stores. He'll need a shoe spoon to get inside or by the Sulu fleets, since the oyster has been pretty well neglected these five years, and every official pearler will be hiking down there. But it requires a certain amount of capital and a stack of officially stamped paper, and I don't fancy Cunningham has either."
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