“What did you build the hut in the woods for?” I inquired.
“When I first came to the coast I had the hut built for the purpose of conducting a series of scientific experiments.”
For several days my leg was so stiff that I could not get out.
Each morning Chapman, with four of the six Malays, went off in the cutter and did not return till noon. I noticed that only a few pearl oyster shells had been stored in the hut. I saw no signs of a diver’s apparatus or of the small nets used by the divers to bring up the shells. There was an air of constraint upon Chapman out of harmony with the man I had known in Brisbane.
The Malays did not speak English, and even if they had, I doubt whether I should have been able to extract any information from them. They were devoted to Chapman and evidently could be relied upon in an emergency.
Daily when Chapman returned I looked in the bottom of the cutter but saw no pearl oysters.
“The fishing must be poor,” I said one day.
“Months are frequently spent in searching for new beds,” Chapman answered.
“Do you bring the oysters here when you find them?” I inquired.
“No, the stench would be unbearable, we have to let them decay before we can search for the pearls.”