CHAPTER XIV
MOSTLY ABOUT PEARLS
It took them a fortnight to get the main posts up and the planking started.
Joe proved himself an invaluable worker, with initiative enough to oversee the others, so that both Schumer and Floyd could leave him and give their attention to the fishery and the pearl getting. Sru, despite his looks and his scars, was shaping well also as an overseer, and the pearls were showing in a satisfactory manner. The pearls taken hitherto by Schumer and Floyd working alone were all free pearls contained in the substance of the oyster or lying loose under the mantle; now began to come in pearls attached to the shell and shells presenting blisters.
It was well that Schumer had some practical knowledge of pearling, or these blistered shells might have been cast with the others.
Now a blister on a pearl shell looks exactly like the bleb raised by a blister on the human skin. It is caused by some foreign body getting into the oyster, causing irritation, and a consequent extra secretion of nacre which covers the foreign body over. But it must never be forgotten also that a pearl lying in the shell may cause sufficient irritation to stimulate this extra secretion of nacre, and that, as a result, a blister when opened may be found to contain a pearl.
At the end of a month, when the house was nearly finished, they had on their hands two dozen of these blistered shells and a hundred and four pearls as the result of the month's fishing, besides eighteen shells to which pearls were adhering.
On paper that would seem to make a good show, but the practical results were not so rosy, though fair enough in all conscience, considering the cheap price of labor.
To arrive at a true estimate of the take one must disregard Schumer's rough statement as to values for something more precise.
The most valuable of all pearls are those that are perfectly round.