right arm,
beyond the flesh of which the age-whitened bone projected several
inches, attested the encounter with a shark that had put an end to his
diving days and made him a fawner and an intriguer for small favors.

"Have you heard, Alec?" were his first words. "Mapuhi has found a
pearl--such a pearl. Never was there one like it ever fished up in
Hikueru, nor in all the Paumotus, nor in all the world. Buy it from him.
He has it now. And remember that I told you first. He is a fool and you
can get it cheap. Have you any tobacco?"

Straight up the beach to a shack under a pandanus tree Raoul headed.
He was his mother's supercargo, and his business was to comb all the
Paumotus for the wealth of copra, shell, and pearls that they yielded
up.

He was a young supercargo, it was his second voyage in such capacity,
and he suffered much secret worry from his lack of experience in pricing
pearls. But when Mapuhi exposed the pearl to his sight he managed to
suppress the startle it gave him, and to maintain a careless, commercial
expression on his face. For the pearl had struck him a blow. It was
large as a pigeon egg, a perfect sphere, of a whiteness that reflected
opalescent lights from all colors about it. It was alive. Never had
he seen anything like it. When Mapuhi dropped it into his hand he was
surprised by the weight of it. That showed that it was a good pearl. He
examined it closely, through a pocket magnifying glass. It was without
flaw or blemish. The purity of it seemed almost to melt into the
atmosphere out of his hand. In the shade it was softly luminous,
gleaming like a tender moon. So translucently white was it, that when
he dropped it into a glass of water he had difficulty in finding it. So
straight and swiftly had it sunk to the bottom that he knew its weight
was excellent.

"Well, what do you want for it?" he asked, with a fine assumption of
nonchalance.

"I want--" Mapuhi began, and behind him, framing his own dark face, the
dark faces of two women and a girl nodded concurrence in what he wanted.
Their heads were bent forward, they were animated by a suppressed
eagerness, their eyes flashed avariciously.

"I want a house," Mapuhi went on. "It must have a roof of galvanized
iron and an octagon-drop-clock. It must be six fathoms long with a porch
all around. A big room must be in the centre, with a round table in the
middle of it and the octagon-drop-clock on the wall. There must be four
bedrooms, two o