PEARLS 217 



collection, and gave him some cheap advice, especially 

 on the desirableness of secrecy. The youth accepted 

 the advice so literally that the story ends. No one ever 

 knew how, when, where, and for what consideration, 

 he disposed of his embarrassments. Fresh from the land 

 of his birth, and with the text of Burns 's poetic letter 

 in his mind, he kept that something to himself. 



The days of such sensational deals are past. The 

 primal crop has long since been harvested. Science 

 is now bidden to stimulate the docile oyster, for the rage 

 for pearls is as the rage of the heathen. Is it not the 

 wish of every woman, old and young, to possess pearls ? 

 And while subject man, flushed with hope, ventures 

 to the "utmost port, washed by the furthest sea," for 

 such merchandise at the caprice of woman. Science 

 plods sedately after man, beguihng him with the hope 

 of some less risky and laborious means of acquiring the 

 gems, while at the same time she soothes the irrepressible 

 passion of every damsel with strings of artistic counter- 

 feits manufactured from the scales of silvery fish, and 

 as pleasant to glance at as many an orient. 



The Spaniards sa}' that a paper cigarette, a glass of 

 water, and the kiss of a pretty girl, will sustain a man 

 for a day without eating. But what is a man to do who 

 has no tobacco, only stale water, who is separated from 

 the nearest girl bj'- seventy miles of perilous seas forlorn, 

 and whose appetite sickens at the sight of the coarse 

 fare of a beche-de-mer boat ? There is but one resource 

 for such a martyr. He must do "a perisher." That 

 is precisely what the master of a lonely boat in an odd 

 angle of the Coral Sea was doing when a joyful sail 

 appeared — a dove-like messenger from civilisation and 

 shops. It was a pitiable famine. No one had had a 

 smoke for a week. The black boys had broken up their 

 nicotine-saturated clay pipes and masticated them to 



