ite form of
amusement was to sit round a large fire, either telling stories of the
girls they had left behind, or singing love melodies. When the weather
was at all cold, they would make a fire in a rather shallow tub, the
sides of which were lined with a layer of sand. They were a wonderfully
light-hearted lot of fellows, and I greatly enjoyed listening to their
chants and yarns. I was more often with them than in Jensen's company,
and it did not take me long to pick up bits of their language.

The _Veielland_ only drew between seven feet and eight feet of water, so
that we were able to venture very close in-shore whenever it was
necessary. At length, about a month after starting, we reached a likely
spot where the captain thought that the precious shells might be found;
here we anchored, and the divers quickly got to work. I ought to have
mentioned that we carried a large whale-boat, and about half-a-dozen
frail little "shell" boats for the use of the divers.

The comings and goings of the various pearling expeditions were of course
regulated by the weather and the state of the tide. The captain himself
went out first of all in the whale-boat, and from it prospected for
shells at the bottom of the crystal sea. The water was marvellously
transparent, and leaning over the side of the boat, Jensen peered eagerly
into his sea-telescope, which is simply a metal cylinder with a lens of
ordinary glass at the bottom. Some of the sea-telescopes would even be
without this lens, being simply a metal cylinder open at both ends.
Although they did not bring the objects looked at nearer the vision, yet
they enabled the prospector to see below the ruffled surface of the
water.

The big whale-boat was followed at a respectful distance by the flotilla
of smaller boats, each containing from four to six Malays. When Jensen
discerned a likely spot through his peculiar telescope, he gave the
signal for a halt, and before you could realise what was going to happen,
the native divers had tumbled out of their boats, and were _swimming_ in
a weird way down to the bottom of the translucent sea. As a rule, one
man was left in each little boat to follow the movements of the divers as
they returned to the surface. Not only did these divers wear no
mechanical "dress," but they used no stimulants or palliatives of any
kind to aid them in their work. All they carried was a small
sheath-knife hung from the waist by a piece of string. Th