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.