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.