The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont

by Louis de Rougemont

CHAPTER II

The three black pearls—The fatal morning—Jensen and his flotilla drift away—Alone on the ship—“Oil on the troubled waters”—A substitute for a rudder—Smoke signals—The whirlpool—The savages attack—I escape from the blacks—A strange monster—The Veielland strikes a reef—Stone deaf through the big wave—I leap into the sea—How Bruno helped me ashore—The dreary island—My raft—A horrible discovery.

This adventure made our Malay crew very anxious to leave these regions. They had not forgotten the octopus incident either, and they now appointed their serang to wait upon the captain—a kind of “one-man” deputation—to persuade him, if possible, to sail for fresh fishing-grounds. At first Jensen tried to persuade them to remain in the same latitudes, which is not to be wondered at, seeing the harvest he had secured; but they would not listen to this, and at last he was compelled to direct his ship towards some other quarter. Where he took us to I cannot say, but in the course of another week we dropped anchor in some practically unexplored pearling grounds, and got to work once more. Our luck was still with us, and we continued increasing every day the value of our already substantial treasure. In these new grounds we found a particularly small shell very rich in pearls, which required no diving for at all. They were secured by means of a trawl or scoop dragged from the stern of the lifeboat; and when the tide was low the men jumped into the shallow water and picked them up at their ease.

One morning, as I was opening the shells as usual, out from one dropped three magnificent black pearls. I gazed at them, fascinated—why, I know not. Ah! those terrible three black pearls; would to God they had never been found! When I showed them to the captain he became very excited, and said that, as they were worth nearly all the others put together, it would be well worth our while trying to find more like them. Now, this meant stopping at sea longer than was either customary or advisable. The pearling season was practically at an end, and the yearly cyclonic changes were actually due, but the captain had got the “pearl fever” very badly and flatly refused to leave. Already we had made an enormous haul, and in addition to the stock in my charge Jensen had rows of pickle bottles full of pearls in his cabin, which he would sit and gloat over for hours like a miser with his gold. He kept on saying that there must be more of these black pearls to be obtained; the three we had found could not possibly be isolated specimens and so on. Accordingly, we kept our divers at work day after day as usual. Of course, I did not know much about the awful dangers to which we were exposing ourselves by remaining out in such uncertain seas when the cyclones were due; and I did not, I confess, see any great reason why we should not continue pearling. I was inexperienced, you see.

The pearl-fishing season, as I afterwards learned, extends from November to May. Well, May came and went, and we were still hard at work, hoping that each day would bring another haul of black pearls to our store of treasure; in this, however, we were disappointed. And yet the captain became more determined than ever to find some. He continued to take charge of the whale-boat whenever the divers went out to work, and he personally superintended their operations. He knew very well that he had already kept them at work longer than he ought to have done, and it was only by a judicious distribution of more jewellery, pieces of cloth, &c., that he withheld them from openly rebelling against the extended stay. The serang told him that if the men did once go on strike, nothing would induce them to resume work, they would simply sulk, he said; and die out of sheer disappointment and pettishness. So the captain was compelled to treat them more amiably than usual. At the very outside their contract would only be for nine months. Sometimes when he showed signs of being in a cantankerous mood because the haul of shells did not please him, the serang would say to him defiantly, “Come on; take it out of me if you are not satisfied.” But Jensen never accepted the challenge. As the days passed, I thought the weather showed indications of a change; for one thing, the aneroid began jumping about in a very uneasy manner. I called Jensen’s attention to the matter, but he was too much interested in his hunt for black pearls to listen to me.

And now I pass to the fatal day that made me an outcast from civilisation for so many weary years. Early one morning in July 1864, Jensen went off as usual with the whole of his crew, leaving me absolutely alone in charge of the ship. The women had often accompanied the divers on their expeditions, and did so on this occasion, being rather expert at the work, which they looked upon as sport.

Whenever I look back upon the events of that dreadful day, I am filled with astonishment that the captain should have been so mad as to leave the ship at all. Only an hour before he left, a tidal wave broke over the stern, and flooded the cabins with a perfect deluge. Both Jensen and I were down below at the time, and came in for an awful drenching. This in itself was a clear and ominous indication of atmospheric disturbance; but all that poor Jensen did was to have the pumps set to work, and after the cabins were comparatively dry he proceeded once more to the pearl banks that fascinated him so, and on which he probably sleeps to this day. The tide was favourable when he left, and I watched the fleet of little boats following in the wake of the whale-boat, until they were some three miles distant from the ship, when they stopped for preparations to be made for the work of diving. I had no presentiment whatever of the catastrophe that awaited them and me.

A cool, refreshing breeze had been blowing up to his time, but the wind now developed a sudden violence, and the sea was lashed into huge waves that quickly swamped nearly every one of the little cockle-shell boats. Fortunately, they could not sink, and as I watched I saw that the Malays who were thus thrown into the water clung to the sides of the little boats, and made the best of their way to the big craft in charge of Captain Jensen. Every moment the sea became more and more turbulent as the wind quickened to a hurricane. When all the Malays had scrambled into the whale-boat, they attempted to pull back to the ship, but I could see that they were unable to make the slightest headway against the tremendous sea that was running, although they worked frantically at the oars.

On the contrary, I was horrified to see that they were gradually drifting away from me, and being carried farther and farther out across the illimitable sea. I was nearly distracted at the sight, and I racked my brains to devise some means of helping them, but could think of nothing feasible. I thought first of all of trying to slip the anchor and let the ship drift in their direction, but I was by no means sure that she would actually do this. Besides, I reflected, she might strike on some of the insidious coral reefs that abound in those fair but terribly dangerous seas. So I came to the conclusion that it would be better to let her remain where she was—at least, for the time being. Moreover, I felt sure that the captain, with his knowledge of those regions, would know of some island or convenient sandbank, perhaps not very far distant, on which he might run his boat for safety until the storm had passed.

The boats receded farther and farther from view, until, about nine in the morning, I lost sight of them altogether. They had started out soon after sunrise. It then occurred to me that I ought to put the ship into some sort of condition to enable her to weather the storm, which was increasing instead of abating. This was not the first storm I had experienced on board the Veielland, so I knew pretty well what to do. First of all, then, I battened down the hatches; this done, I made every movable thing on deck as secure as I possibly could. Fortunately all the sails were furled at the time, so I had no trouble with them. By mid-day it was blowing so hard that I positively could not stand upright, but had to crawl about on my hands and knees, otherwise I should have been hurled overboard. I also attached myself to a long rope, and fastened the other end to one of the masts, so that in the event of my being washed into the raging sea, I could pull myself on board again.