"After he had finished his story he turned to my husband, and said—
"'You and your wife have always been true friends to drunken old Jack Gurden. Now, tell me, did you ever know me to tell a lie except when I wanted to get a drink and hadn't any excuse?'
"We both laughed, and said we knew he was a truthful man.
"'Did you ever hear me talking about a lagoon full of pearl shell—when I was mad with drink?' he inquired.
"We laughed again, and said that he had done so very often.
"'Ah,' he said, 'but it is true. There is such a place, and now that my time is coming near, I'll tell you where it is, and you, Mrs. Tracey, who have nursed the old drunken, blackguard beachcomber, and asked him to seek strength from God to keep off the cursed grog, will be one of the richest women in the world. I wrote it all down four or five months ago, in case when you came back here you found I was dead.'
"Thereupon he handed my husband a number of sheets of paper, on one of which was drawn a rough plan of Arrecifos Island, or, as he called it, Ujilong. The rest contained clear and perfectly written details of the position of the pearl-shell beds."
Barry nodded. "He had lived there, I suppose."
"For quite a number of years—from 1840 to 1846. He married one of the native women there. There were then over seven hundred natives living on these thirteen islands, and Gurden said he could quite understand why the richness of the pearl beds were never discovered by white men, for no ship had ever entered the lagoon within the memory of any living native of the place, and not once in ten years did the people even see a passing ship send a boat ashore."
(That this was true, Barry knew, for he had often heard trading captains speak of Arrecifos and Eniwetok as great chains of palm-clad islets, enclosing lagoons through which there was no passage for ships.)