on to such luxuries as spices, coffee, and
"Brummagem" jewellery, of a kind which is too well known to need
description. At the same time it must be admitted that in addition to
their wages, which were paid them when they were discharged from the
ship, the Malays had practically no opportunity of being dishonest, even
though they might have been inclined that way. They never came into
actual contact with the pearls; they were rewarded according to the
number of shells brought to the surface, and not the value of the pearls
they might contain. All the shells were opened by me. A healthy spirit
of rivalry was maintained among the divers, and the man who had the best
record of shells each week was rewarded with an extra allowance of rum or
tobacco; a choice of some article of jewellery, or anything else he
fancied from among the stock we had on board. A bottle of chutney or
pickles was considered a specially valuable delicacy. No money was ever
given to the divers as wages whilst at sea, remuneration in kind being
always given instead. Each expedition would be absent perhaps six hours,
and on its return each diver generally had between twenty and forty
shells to hand over to me. These I arranged in long rows on the deck,
and allowed them to remain there all night. Next day I cleaned them by
scraping off the coral from the shells, and then opened them with an
ordinary dinner-knife. Of course, every oyster did not produce a pearl;
in fact, I have opened as many as a hundred consecutive shells without
finding a single pearl. The gems are hidden away in the fleshy part of
the oyster, and have to be removed by pressure of the thumb. The empty
shells are then thrown in a heap on one side, and afterwards carefully
stowed away in the hold, as they constitute a valuable cargo in
themselves, being worth--at that time, at any rate (1864)--from 200 to
250 pounds, and even 350 pounds a ton. All the pearls I found I placed
in a walnut jewel-case, measuring about fourteen inches by eight inches
by six inches. The value of the treasure increased day by day, until it
amounted to many thousands of pounds; but of this more hereafter. I did
not know much of the value of pearls then--how could I, having had no
previous experience?

Captain Jensen, however, assured me at the end of the season that we had
something like 50,000 pounds worth of pearls aboard, to say nothing about
the value of the shells, of which we had about thirty