a
boss buyer of pearl and shell, collected a sizable fortune, was thrown
one day from his horse in the bush and died there of thirst before he
could be found.
The Chow-Fa, which
carried me on this stage of my .adventures, was owned by the North
German Lloyd Steamship Company. She was just one of a number of
unromantic but profitable freighters with restricted passenger
accommodation which served as auxiliaries to the big German liners
calling at Singapore. But her scheduled run sounded like adventure
itself: through the China Sea, past the Sarawak and Brunei coasts to
Labuan Island, thence to Jesselton, Kudat, Sandakan in British North
Borneo; from there past the diminutive twin islands of Banguey to—at
last—Jolo in the Mindoro Sea and Zamboanga on the island of Mindanao in
the Southern Philippines. Here was the "Solo-Sumbungu" of old Leon.
The
names as I read them were thrilling enough, but the yarns I heard from
the clerks at the shipping office and from other people left me no
doubt that I should get plenty of excitement if I got nothing else.
Eventually, as it turned out, I was not disappointed either way.
A fellow at Raffles Hotel told me that the Chow'Fa's skipper
had the trade in pearls from these islands all in his own hands and
advised me not to mention my business while on board. Otherwise, he
hinted, I might find myself overboard in a shark-infested sea. "The
skipper talks soft, he's a smood-ger," he said. "But he will stand no
interference with his business."
I paid for this advice with a bottle of fizz, but later when I knew the skipper of the Chow-Fa I
realized that my leg had been pulled. A good fellow he was, tall,
blond, blue-eyed, typically German and excellent company. As there was
only one other passenger, we had many a long chat together. In the
course of our talk he casually inquired after the object of my trip. I
was not going to take undue risks, so I said I was a naturalist.
On the morning of the tenth day, as the sun rose out of the sea, we stood off Jolo, and as the rays dispelled the purple
