she was gazing at a
patch of sandy-red hair on the head of a corpse. The sea flung the body
toward her, then drew it back. It turned over, and she saw that it had
no face. Yet there was something familiar about that patch of
sandy-red hair. An hour passed. She did not exert herself to make the
identification. She was waiting to die, and it mattered little to her
what man that thing of horror once might have been.

But at the end of the hour she sat up slowly and stared at the corpse.
An unusually large wave had thrown it beyond the reach of the lesser
waves. Yes, she was right; that patch of red hair could belong to but
one man in the Paumotus. It was Levy, the German Jew, the man who had
bought the pearl and carried it away on the Hira. Well, one thing was
evident: The Hira had been lost. The pearl buyer's god of fishermen and
thieves had gone back on him.

She crawled down to the dead man. His shirt had been torn away, and she
could see the leather money belt about his waist. She held her breath
and tugged at the buckles. They gave easier than she had expected, and
she crawled hurriedly away across the sand, dragging the belt after her.
Pocket after pocket she unbuckled in the belt and found empty. Where
could he have put it? In the last pocket of all she found it, the first
and only pearl he had bought on the voyage. She crawled a few feet
farther, to escape the pestilence of the belt, and examined the pearl.
It was the one Mapuhi had found and been robbed of by Toriki. She
weighed it in her hand and rolled it back and forth caressingly. But in
it she saw no intrinsic beauty. What she did see was the house Mapuhi
and Tefara and she had builded so carefully in their minds. Each time
she looked at the pearl she saw the house in all its details, including
the octagon-drop-clock on the wall. That was something to live for.

She tore a strip from her ahu and tied the pearl securely about her
neck. Then she went on along the beach, panting and groaning, but
resolutely seeking for cocoanuts. Quickly she found one, and, as she
glanced around, a second. She broke one, drinking its water, which was
mildewy, and eating the last particle of the meat. A little later she
found a shattered dugout. Its outrigger was gone, but she was hopeful,
and, before the day was out, she found the outrigger. Every find was an
augury. The pearl was a talisman. Late in the afternoon she saw a wooden
box floating low in the water. When she dragge