water, a circle of pounded coral sand a hundred yards wide, twenty
miles in circumference, and from three to five feet above high-water
mark. On the bottom of the huge and glassy lagoon was much pearl
shell, and from the deck of the schooner, across the slender ring of
the atoll, the divers could be seen at work. But the lagoon had no
entrance for even a trading schooner. With a favoring breeze cutters
could win in through the tortuous and shallow channel, but the
schooners lay off and on outside and sent in their small boats.

The Aorai swung out a boat smartly, into which sprang half a dozen
brown-skinned sailors clad only in scarlet loincloths. They took the
oars, while in the stern sheets, at the steering sweep, stood a young
man garbed in the tropic white that marks the European. The golden
strain of Polynesia betrayed itself in the sun-gilt of his fair skin
and cast up golden sheens and lights through the glimmering blue of
his eyes. Raoul he was, Alexandre Raoul, youngest son of Marie Raoul,
the wealthy quarter-caste, who owned and managed half a dozen trading
schooners similar to the Aorai. Across an eddy just outside the
entrance, and in and through and over a boiling tide-rip, the boat
fought its way to the mirrored calm of the lagoon. Young Raoul leaped
out upon the white sand and shook hands with a tall native. The man's
chest and shoulders were magnificent, but the stump of a 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