62 CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER 



Science, more precise and frank than the frankest of poets, 

 tells us that oysters are afflicted with tapeworms, and to 

 kill the germ of these indecent pests, enclose them in 

 untimely tombs, which from the human standpoint are 

 among the most lovely and precious of gems. The asser- 

 tions of the scientific are often the reverse of poetical. We 

 are constrained to bel^ve them, but like our poetical 

 delusions better, and for the origin of the pearl prefer the 

 quaint fable of the Persians to the unpleasant fact of the 

 zoologist. A drop of water of ineffable purity falls from 

 heaven to the sea, an oyster gapes and swallows it, the drop 

 hardens and ripens, and becomes a pearl ; and who is so 

 devoid of the perception of purity, beauty and worth as to 

 despise a pearl ? 



Here about, pearls were found. We delight in them, 

 though they prove the previous existence of a filthy ailment. 

 Any oyster may contain a pearl, a pearl of great price — a 

 thing of beauty, a joy for ever. Every gold-lip, every black- 

 lip oyster, is a chance in a lottery. Was there ever a 

 Beachcomber so pure and elevated of soul as to refuse the 

 chances that Nature proffers gratuitously? My meagre 

 horde includes pearls of several tints, black, pink, and 

 white. They represent the paltriest prizes in the lottery 

 that no Government, however paternal, may prohibit, being 

 mere " baroque,'' fit only to be pounded up as medicine for 

 some Chinaman luxuriously sick. Yet there is a chance. 

 Some day the great prize may be drawn. And then, 

 " Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook ? " The 

 Beachcomber may be perverted into — well, the next best on 

 the list. Yet they say in pitiful tones, those who rake among 

 the muck of the streets, " What a dull life ! What a hope- 

 less existence ! He is out of it all ! " Yes, with a glad- 

 some mind, and all its sounds, if not forgotten, at least 

 muffled by music, soft as dawn, profound as the very sea. 



Kennedy Shoal has been mentioned incidentally. Some 

 miles further north are two bare sandbanks. Prior to the 

 year 1890 they were occupied by a beche-de-mer fisherman, 

 whose headquarters were on the chief of the South Barnard 



