Into something rare and strange.
Tempest, Act I, Sc. ii.
Some natives of the Sulu Archipelago believe that the nautilus pearl is a most unlucky object to possess, for should a man engage in a fight while wearing such a pearl he would inevitably be killed. Hence, when a native by chance comes across one of them, he very quickly throws it away, as a probable bringer of ill-luck. Occasionally, however, such pearls fall into the hands of those who are less influenced by superstition, and one weighing 72 grains was given, in 1884, to an Australian gentleman, by Mohammed Beddreddin, brother-in-law of the Sultan of Sulu. This was a perfect, pear-shaped pearl of a creamy-white hue and somewhat translucent; it is composed of the porcelanous, not of the nacreous constituent of the shell.[[683]]
East Indian Baroque pearl. Weight over 1700 grains, Holland, 1775.
It has been stated that this Sulu superstition is not shared by the natives of Celebes Island, near Borneo, for here such pearls are kept as charms and talismans. One of an irregular pear-shape, weighing 27½ grains, has been found on the northern coast of the island.[[684]] The finding of a nautilus pearl by a Chinese woman in Borneo is noted by Rumphius, who describes it as being as large as a bean and white as a piece of alabaster, hard and bright, but of very irregular shape. The finder put it in a closed box, and was not a little surprised to discover when she opened the box after a time that the original pearl had engendered another one the size of a lentil; later it had two other, smaller offspring. The woman carefully treasured her find as a lucky stone which would bring her good fortune in her search for mussels. Rumphius shrewdly conjectures that the smaller concretions had broken off the larger one while it was enclosed in the box.[[685]]
The well-known lines in Shakespeare’s “Othello”:
Of one whose hand, like the base Judean’s,
Cast away a pearl richer than all his tribe.
have been explained in many different ways by the commentators, one of whom (Steevens) saw in them a reference to the following story current in Venice in the sixteenth century. A Jew, after long and perilous wanderings in the East, succeeded in bringing with him to Venice a great number of fine pearls. These he disposed of there at satisfactory prices, with the exception of one pearl of immense size and extraordinary beauty, upon which he set a price so high that no one was willing to pay it. Finally, the Jew invited all the leading gem-dealers to meet him on the Rialto, and when as many of them as answered his call had assembled, he once more, and for the last time, offered his peerless pearl for sale, detailing all its perfections in eloquent terms. However, he made no concession in the price, and the dealers unanimously refused to purchase it, probably expecting that the Jew would at last be forced to make a reduction, but to their amazement, instead of doing this, he threw his pearl before their very eyes into the waters of the canal, preferring rather to lose it than to cheapen it.[[686]]