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Updated: June 1, 2025
The bed of the sea at these pearling grounds is usually coral, with innumerable holes of different depths and sizes dotted all over it. It was in these recesses that the best shells were mostly found.
It occurred in the Solomons, where our wildest work had been done in the wild young days, and where we were once more principally on a holiday, incidentally to look after our holdings on Florida Island and to look over the pearling possibilities of the Mboli Pass. We were lying at Savo, having run in to trade for curios. Now Savo is alive with sharks.
The pearling season in the Paumotus was over, and all hands were returning to Tahiti. The six of us cabin passengers were pearl-buyers. It had been a prosperous season. Not one of us had cause for complaint, nor one of the eighty-five deck passengers either. All had done well, and all were looking forward to a rest-off and a good time in Papeete. Of course, the Petite Jeanne was overloaded.
I fancy this was the first time Jensen had embarked on a pearling expedition on a craft of the size of the Veielland, his previous trips having been undertaken on much smaller vessels, say of about ten tons. Although the fitting out of the ship was left entirely in his hands, I insisted upon having a supply of certain stores for myself put aboard things he would never have thought about.
I bin in London, I bin in Antwerp. I bin see snow all over. That how I talk about my snow pearl. I tell you my yarn." Hassan smoothed down his white jacket, lit a lean cigarette, rolled the incense thrifty smoker that he was as a sweet morsel under the tongue, permitted it to drift lazily from his lips, and gave his story. "I bin deck hand on pearling lugger. To be spell about with wind pump.
On arriving at the pearling settlement, the blacks found themselves among a number of other unfortunate creatures like themselves, and all were compelled to go out in pearling vessels just as the exigencies of the industry required. Jacky Jacky himself was kept at this work for upwards of three years; and he told me many terrible stories of the white man's indescribable cruelty and villainy.
He would buy a schooner one of those yacht- like, coppered crafts that sailed like witches and go trading copra and pearling among the islands. He would make the valley and the bay his headquarters. He would build a patriarchal grass house like Tati's, and have it and the valley and the schooner filled with dark-skinned servitors.
"Young MacTavish, who is in a crack English regiment, asked the captain of a pearling lugger whether he didn't know Talbot de Cholmondeley in the Blues. "The pearler said very likely he had met 'em, and no doubt he'd remember their faces if he saw them, but he never could remember names.
During the voyage to the pearling grounds the water supply on board ran short, and so great was the suffering among the blacks they were kept on the shortest of short commons, as you may suppose that they plotted to steal a cask of the precious fluid for their own use. The vessel was quite a small one, and the water was kept in the hold.
So it was well that I had some one to look out for me. I know that if it had not been for Otoo, I should not be here to-day. Of numerous instances, let me give one. I had had some experience in blackbirding before I went pearling in the Paumotus. Otoo and I were in Samoa we really were on the beach and hard aground when my chance came to go as recruiter on a blackbird brig.
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