224 TROPIC DAYS 



kind of plague, so that there shall be not one but several 

 pearls in every suffering individual, and in the greater 

 number chance will contrive a larger proportion of 

 orients. Every oyster has its potentialities; Science 

 seeks to convert potentialities into certainties. 



Pearls and High Tragedy. 



Such merchandise has ever provoked the spirit of 

 adventure in hardy, healthy men, and pearls have 

 claimed the lives of the best among them. The health 

 and figure of the friend who beguiled many an evening 

 were sacrificed to the lustrous gem so prized of women. 

 A model of stalwart manhood of the Viking strain, 

 he died early, worn out with the stress with which he 

 sought the most serene of personal adornments. There 

 may have been some slight exaggeration in the popular 

 belief that he had walked along the bottom of the sea 

 from one end of the Great Barrier Reef to the other, a 

 stretch of over one thousand miles; but that he had 

 accomplished more than that distance in the aggregate 

 of his submarine wanderings may be quite credible. 

 Probabl}^ there was no human being who possessed 

 such intimate knowledge of the character of the ocean 

 floor within the living bounds of the Great Barrier; 

 and since he was silent, reserved, and self-contained 

 to all save friends of long standing, was never guilty 

 of boasting, and ever reluctant to tell of his adventures, 

 the world is little the wiser from his work, though at 

 the best time of his life most of his days were spent 

 under water in fairyland-Hke scenes. It may seem 

 absurd to associate fair^-land with the depths of the 

 sea; but the sh}'' explorer of many a coral grove has 

 been heard to sa}^ that the scenes fulfilled his ideals 

 of what the realms of the fairies might be like. 



