one at night
The season which followed proved to be an unusually successful one for the divers . The crop of oysters was large , and many pearls were found . The gems which were to go to the Sultan were superb , and there would be enough of them to make a truly royal necklace . One night about six months after the `` macasla '' festival I woke suddenly from a sound sleep , with that strange feeling which sometimes comes to one at night , that I was not alone . While I lay listening and peering into the darkness of the room in which I slept , I heard a soft splash in the water beneath me , such as a big fish might have made if he had come to the surface , and diving back had struck the water with his tail . It had been high tide soon after midnight , and the water was not more than three or four feet beneath me . I listened a long time , but could hear nothing more , and finally went to sleep again , deciding that the splash I had heard had been made by a shark , and that some noise which he had made before that had been what had roused me .