The Popular Magazine/Volume 84/Number 2/The Pearl That Came Home

by H. de Vere Stacpoole

The Pearl that Came Home

By H. De Vere Stacpoole

Author of “The Point of a Thousand Spears,” Etc.

“For Tragedy in her serious or comic guise, search the history of gems.” An illustration of that lies in this story of a pearl which caused trouble wherever it went—among royalty and rabble, from the China Sea to Europe.

The other day in London the Southern Star, one of the largest and certainly the most beautiful of the world's diamonds, was put up for auction and “failed to realize any price.” I forget what the bidding went to, nor does the amount matter beyond the statement that it was absurdly small.

The stone was too big—too big to be worn in an ordinary way. Big diamonds are out of fashion, and this everlasting crystal, holding in it the beauty and soul of sunrise, was turned down.

This is not a treatise on jewelry, else, leaving the Southern Star aside, I would quote many instances of lovely gems neglected, left in obscurity by taste, and only picked up at the dictates of fashion or vice versa. The black pearl, that was worth little till the Empress Eugenie made it sought after, the drop pearl that was worth much, till women gave up wearing drop earrings, the opal that went out of favor less on account of superstition than fad; a list as long as the list of poets, painters, writers and sculptors, the intrinsic beauty of whose work was worth nothing till revealed by the eyes of some critic-seer.

The Sulu archipelago, lying to the north of Borneo, contains over a hundred small islands, and the most beautiful pearls in the world have come from here. There is something in the water of the tropic seas that lends color to the coral and special beauty to the pearl, and of all the seas, the Sea of Sulu is most highly charged with this dynamic something that finds expression in beauty.

It was in 1882, when the Sultan of Sulu was fighting the Spaniards, the same sultan who sold his rights in the great bird-nest caves to the North Borneo Company, that Fleming, who had got hold of an old proa and the service of a Sulu man, whose name sounded like Nakardike, was fishing for pearls—illicitly. He had come in through the southern Sibutu passage and worked up as far as Cagayan Sulu, and it was amid the tiny islets north of here and in view of the palms of Cagayan that he was doing his fishing.

Now, if you will look at the charts or at any large map, you will see that Sulu waters are almost as much inclosed as Tidal Basin. Five-hundred miles by five hundred miles, they are hedged from the south China Sea by Palawan, from the Celebes Sea by Sibuguey and all the islands to Tawi-Tawi, from the Pacific by the Philippines—a vast blue basin, where the shark shared kingdom with an emperor who impaled men for pearling without a permit. These facts did not in the least disturb Fleming in his fishing.

War proas might break the horizon any moment, or a boat of Spaniards come along, men worse than the men of Sulu. It did not matter; it was all in the day's work. No law ran in these seas to save a lawless man from extreme punishment. It did not matter, for only in the lawless seas could Fleming do his job, which was plunder in all its forms, from opium smuggling to barratry. Broken in his last deal with the customs, he had come down to the Celebes and with the profit of a lucky gamble at Mendao bought the fishing proa and provisions for three men for four months; also, the services of Nakardike and a Malay boy, Achmat.

A week ago, here, within sight of Cagayan, they had struck oyster ground and coach-whip fucus in six-fathom water, taking in six days three hundred pair of shells and ten pearls; six of the pearls were almost worthless, the others, at the prices ruling in those days, varying in value from five to twenty pounds apiece.

This evening, an hour before sunset, Fleming came on the great find.

Opening the last oyster of the take, a thing nearly as big as a soup plate, he saw a bulge on the flesh near the hinge of the shell; dividing the muscle, he squeezed gently and, like a great white bubble, out came a pearl. It was enormous—big as a pigeon's egg nearly, weighing, maybe, a hundred grains and absolutely round, luminous, and perfect.

Holding it in the palm of his wet and dirty hand, Fleming looked at it. Behind him Nakardike, naked as the new moon and dripping from his last dive, stood gazing down at it; Achmat, squatting on the deck near by, gazed, too, and at the kriss which Nakardike had picked up from the deck, where lay his loin cloth and betel box.

A passing gull cried out at them, the only sound breaking the silence of that sea, stretching in the sunset toward the palms of Cagayan and the Sibutu passage.

Here was all Fleming wanted. He was up in pearls.

He had gained his knowledge from Chi Loo, the opium middleman, who dealt in pearls as well as opium, and who dwelt in Hankow. It was Chi Loo who had given him the tip about Sulu waters. This thing would be worth, maybe, five thousand pounds in the open market. But, as Fleming looked at it, after the first realization of its value, he did not see it—or only as the nucleus of a crowded picture, wherein figured Chi Loo, to whom he would offer it for sale, the bars of Hankow and Formosa, where he would cut a dash—games, champagne and dancing.

Nakardike, looking down, saw the Sultan of Sulu, who impaled men for illicit pearling. Saw also a house on stilts, near the Itang River, where he could live in comfort with a brown wife and unlimited credit at the traders' station; saw, also, that the moment had come.

Unknown to Fleming stood the terrible fact that this expedition, though paid for by him, was entirely Nakardike's.

Nakardike was not the person to risk the anger of the sultan for a few dollars—a month's wages. He had come with a cut-and-dried plan to be put in operation directly the pearl takings were worth the trouble of seizing, and not a moment later, seeing the danger of lingering in these prohibited waters. The moment had come, and the blow of the kriss that nearly severed Fleming's head left nothing to be desired in the way of vigor and directness.

Nakardike seized the pearl, pouched it, and helped Achmat to throw the body overboard.

Now, the Spaniards at that time had several gunboats lying by their fortified settlement, Jalo, and the smallest of these, the Seville, a hundred-ton tin pot, with a beam engine and a swivel gun, steering eight knots and captained by the gay young spark, Lieutenant Alvarez, was cruising one fine morning between Laparan Island and Cape Sandakan, when the lookout sighted a proa.

Alvarez was down below playing the guitar and smoking. He came on deck. The fools on the proa had altered their course, which was as good as saying “Chase me,” and the Seville asked nothing better. She was proud of her speed, and she was aching to fire her gun. She did. She fired it twice, in fact, after the proa had hauled her wind and surrendered.

Nakardike and Achmat received the boarders with outstretched hands spread wide open and palms up. They were innocent men, fishers who had lost their gear, natives of Timbu Mata, who had no grudge against the Spanish or leanings toward the sultan or his troops.

“Just so,” said Alvarez, who could talk the Sulu lingo. “And that?” He pointed with his toe at a bajak lying in the port scuppers.

A bajak is an oyster rake made in the likeness of a hayrake and of very heavy wood; it has a heavy stone lashed to its under part to make it run true; it is a thing quite distinctive, for there is nothing else like it born of the sea, and Nakardike, like a fool, had never thought of heaving it overboard. Men do stupid things like that, especially men of the type of Nakardike and his assistant, Achmat, for Providence has ordained that murder shall always have for its shadow stupidity, and stupidity—what is it, but sister to the callousness that permits men to commit murder? Something is always overlooked.

There was also an oyster shell forgotten; there was also a stain on the deck that much scraping had not removed. A stain on the deck was nothing. It might be shark blood or what not. But why the scraping?

Now, Alvarez, though only a lieutenant in the Spanish navy, on duty at Jalo, was a man of parts. He could reason, using facts as counters of thought, and that is the most difficult thing in the world; also, he was thorough.

What followed now was most curious. Nakardike, put through the third degree and the Spanish torture of the tarred rope, handed up the pearls, all save the great one, and, had Alvarez been another man, he would have departed with the loot, satisfied with a good morning's work. But he was Alvarez, and, taking Nakardike below into the dog hole of a cabin, he felt his head like a phrenologist—finding not only the bump of acquisitiveness, but a lump which was the pearl tied up in a bit of fish skin and bound in the hair, so that Alvarez had to cut it loose with his pocketknife.

He had guessed instinctively that Nakardike was holding some of the pearls back, and he had glimpsed the little lump beneath the hair, but he never expected anything like this.

Here was fortune. Guitars, girls, bull fights, pleasure in Seville, or, better, Paris—Paris! Paris—that was the place of all places. In five beats of a pendulum, such is the power of mind, he had mapped and colored his future. He put the pearl in his pocket; no one had seen it. It was a secret between himself and the man of Sulu. The secret had to be sealed.

He brought Nakardike on deck.

Now this bloodhound of a man had not only scented hidden loot, but also he was convinced in his mind that a white man had been boss of the proa and had been murdered for the sake of the pearl. Two things told him of this—the stain on the deck and an old shoe lying in a corner of the dog hole below.

Did he accuse Nakardike? Not a bit. He ordered his men to unshackle the halyard of the big sail and put the rope round Achmat's neck.

He knew that if murder had been committed, both men were in the business. There was no accusation. If murder had been committed, Achmat would think that Nakardike had confessed down below, putting the blame on him—Achmat—and would try to escape by a counter accusation. It was beautifully reasoned and swiftly done, and the result justified the reasoning.

Achmat confessed everything, accusing Nakardike, who confessed everything, accusing Achmat.

Alvarez hanged them both and made a target of the proa, at five hundred yards, sinking her at the sixth shot.

Then he went back to Jalo, and reported a naval affair, in which he multiplied the proa by six; handed over the small pearls, said nothing about the great one, and settled down to brood and make plans for the future. His cleverness had brought him to an impasse. Up to this he had been careless and happy; now, with fortune in his waistcoat pocket, he was discontented.

All the fun in the world was waiting for him, and he was tied to Jalo. He was on war service and could not resign his position; he could not disclose his treasure; he could not sell the thing in the East. He had long, casual talks with Ah Wong, a Chinese trader who supplied Jalo with provisions, and Ah Wong, who knew everything about everything saleable, gave it as his opinion that for the sale of jewels London or Paris was the only market; unless, indeed, one could get hold of one of the native princes of India.

But all this talk was no use to Alvarez. He was tied to Jalo and the Sea of Sulu. There was no escape for another five years, at least, and he could not wait.

One day he was ordered to take the Seville on a scouting expedition to the Borneo coast near Maraop. He ran her through the Sibutu passage and piled her on a charted reef near the entrance to Darvel Bay.

The boat he escaped in ran to Timbu Matu. Here he and his men turned pirates—they were pirates, anyway—licensed up to this, unlicensed now.

This piracy business was not his intention. His intention was to get to Europe with the pearl and the small amount of money he had taken with him from Jalo, but he was more or less in the hands of his men. These ruffians, seizing a big proa and killing the owners, were like jinn he had evoked, and he had to go with them and be parcel of their doings; and he was a bit of a jinni himself.

Powerfully armed for those days and waters—they had taken rifles and ammunition before leaving the Seville—they were a match for anything they were likely to meet. But the business was frankly rotten. The small vessels they met could only supply them with provisions or tobacco. Once they got a bag of dollars, and once some tins of Canton opium. There was nothing in it but the gamble and the satisfaction of the plunder instinct, and all the time Alvarez, though steadily degrading, kept tight to his pearl and his dreams of Europe.

He was the only one of the lot who knew anything of navigation, and past Laut he began to edge them west into the Java Sea. They had kicked off their clothes with their civilization. Naked and brown, wearing loin cloths and with long hair, more terrible than the men of Sulu, they were an affront to the spirit of the white man. And Alvarez was not the least terrible; the pearl that had led him to all this he had secreted in his long hair, following the hint given him by Nakardike, and the money he had brought with him from Jalo he had hidden beneath a plank below, against the time when he might be able to use it.

One day off Banka, they sighted a small brig coming east, and the brig, sighting the proa, altered her course; they chased, reckoning on the small size of the prey and its timidity.

When the two vessels were within a mile of one another, the wind failed and fell to a dead calm, and the proa putting out her sweeps crawled like a venomous brown beetle across the glassy swell toward its victim.

The brig was the Itang, Captain Schmerder, Dutch owned and making to Batavia from Calcutta, with a cargo of cotton goods. The proa came right alongside of her, and Alvarez and his ruffians boarded her. They had killed the captain and half the crew and driven the rest below, closing the hatch on them, when——

Around the shoulder of far-off Gasper Island came the Pieter Corneliszoon Hoojt, the new Dutch gunboat on the Batavia station, firing up for all she was worth and with her crew rushing to stations.

It is funny to think that all these vigorous happenings had been, so to speak, lying, perdu in a quiet old oyster of the Sulu Sea, to be fished up and set free by Alvarez; yet so it was, and, with the pearl which was the core of them in his hair and fighting to the bitter end, he was killed with all his men, on May 16, 1882, in the last battle with pirates that took place in the Java seas.

Now, what happened to the pearl, and who discovered it in his hair and managed to secrete it and bring it to Amsterdam and sell it for eight hundred pounds—a wretched price—to a jeweler of the Heeren Graght? I am not going to say. To be honest, I don't know.

It is enough to know that the Amsterdam diamond merchant sold it for twice the amount to a jeweler of the Rue de la Paix in Paris, who sold it to Prince Muroff, who gave it to Margaret Stein at a luncheon at the Café de Paris, who, wishing to emulate Cleopatra, called for a glass of vinegar to dissolve it in. Learning its value from the prince, she put it in her pocket, instead.

It was in a little red-morocco case and undrilled as yet, and she took it home and forgot it. That seems to you impossible, which proves that you do not know the mentality of Margaret Stein and her tribe. Stolen by Rosalie, her maid, it passed into the possession of Monsieur Bourgeois, at a price which permitted Rosalie to set up a bonnet shop in the Rue du Mont Thabor, and if you had passed that shop with a friend and said to him, “Look, that business came out of an oyster that lived in the sea of Sulu,” he would not have believed you, nor would he have believed the same statement made concerning the new café which Monsieur Bourgeois opened that same year in the Rue St. Honoré.

In those times, just as all good defunct Americans go to Paris, all good jewels went at last to Russia—or nearly all.

The pearl came to Russia. It had been badly drilled in Paris, a thousandth part of an inch out of the true, so it wouldn't hang properly if strung on a necklace; it had to be worn by itself on a thin chain. When Princess Anakoff opened the little box on her birthday, she cried: “Oh, what a size!” Then, when she heard of the drilling and that it could not be made the foundation of a new necklace, she pouted, made a scene, and the prince, who was a minister of state, flew into “one of his tempers,” tried to throw the thing out of the window, broke a vase, and went off to attend to his official duties in a condition of mind that left its small, but ineradicable, mark on the future history of Russia.

The pearl was locked away with other discarded jewels. It had been the innocent cause of a lot of dark work. It had killed Alvarez and his men; it had incited the spirit of thievery in the hearts of more than a few, and now it was out of harm's way, or out of men's way, which amounts to the same thing. Out of harm's way and securely locked up in a safe made by Borodinski—the Griffiths of Russia—and in the company of some musty old documents, the title deeds of houses in Paris and Vienna, and some miniatures of the early Anakoffs done by Poushkin.

Also, there was a watch by Lépine, a few jade ornaments, and a huge turquoise that had come across the Urals in a Tartar's cap in the time of Attila.

Wonderful stories that turquoise could have told, had it possessed memory and a tongue. Possessing neither, it was dumb—as was the pearl.

Years passed.

Once the door of the safe was flung open, and a madly laughing woman seized the documents and flung them about on the floor. Then with one of them she struck a bearded man on the face, who, in a rage, struck at her and missed, while another man, pale and thin and dressed in black and seeming moved by sudden fury, drew an ivory-handled revolver from his breast pocket and shot the bearded man. The latter fell, face down, on the floor, flinging up his arms as he fell.

Then the documents were shot back into the safe and the smoking revolver with them, and the door was shut, and the pearl and its companions found themselves in darkness and silence again, after this momentary glimpse of the strange world that surrounded them.

For a long time nothing happened—how long, who knows?—years—during which the documents were evidently uncalled for, like the jewels. And then one night the doors of the safe flew open to the beating of drums and cries and shrieks and flare of torches from the street, on which the room opened, and a white-haired woman was gathering everything in a pillow case—documents, pearl, jade ornaments, and all.

Next thing, after many weeks, a blaze of light, and the pearl was in the hand of Ben Oued, the jeweler of Constantinople. Then in a few weeks it was in London, in the office of Romanes, the dealer, and a thick-nosed elderly man, with a flower in his coat, was saying:

“I would like to buy something for my wife—something of character. Diamonds—no; she has all she wants. Ah, let us look at that pearl—badly pierced, worth very little!”

“Pearls are jumping every day, Mr. Gunderman,” said Romanes, filling a glass with water and putting the pearl in the water, where it instantly and almost completely vanished from sight, thus proving its worth. Then he weighed it in a little scales, then he put it back on its chain.

“How much?” asked Gunderman and concluded the purchase of the pearl.

Two hours later the new purchaser came back to the Savoy Hotel, where he was staying. Mrs. Gunderman was having afternoon tea at a little table in the dance room. She was stout and florid, and when he gave her his present, and she opened the box and saw the great pearl on its little chain, she thought from its size that it was false; also, it was on a two-penny-half-penny-looking little chain.

“It's platinum,” said he, referring to the chain. Then he told her the price he had paid, and she lost her temper. She had set her mind lately on emeralds, she had said nothing on the matter to him, but subconsciously and half consciously she had been turning toward emeralds. And now this thing which did not appeal to her at all—and at such a price!

He told her that pearls were increasing in value—that they were jumping every day. But the activity of pearls did not interest her. She said not a word about emeralds, but she frankly told him he had been “done.” She had to say something nasty, and unconsciously she said the thing that would hurt the most, reflecting as it did on his business capacity.

The accusation of doing a man—within the limits of the law—would have been something of a compliment, but to accuse him of being done—well——

Flying into a temper, he left her and sought solace in the American bar.

Then, when they came down to dinner at half past seven, he found she was wearing the pearl as a sort of make-up to him. He had recovered his temper, and, as he sat opposite to her during the meal, his eyes traveled about the room.

“You don't know how well that pearl looks, Sarah,” said he. “It's a new idea wearing one strung like that. Look at all those women and their pearl necklaces, and not one genuine, I bet. You see, they make them now so good you can't tell the difference. But that thing tells itself for genuine at once, because no one would wear an imitation alone like that.”

“I suppose so,” said she, without disclosing the fact that she had quite made up her mind to get him to sell the thing and purchase the emeralds she now acutely longed for.

“I must get it insured to-morrow,” he went on. “It will go in with the rest of your things at Lloyds.” He took a gold cigarette case from his pocket and gave her a cigarette, then he lit up, and a little later they stepped into their limousine and were driven a hundred yards away to the Strand Theater.

Here, under the influence of the genius of Berry, they forgot everything for a couple of hours, returning to the Savoy and their suite, where Julius Gunderman was just in the act of pouring himself out a whisky and soda, when his eyes became fixed on his wife.

“Where's the pearl?” he asked.

It was gone. The platinum chain was there, but the pearl was gone. Everything was there, even the little platinum wire that had pierced the thing. The wire had broken, that was all.

Like demented creatures they ran about the room searching the carpet, under the chairs, everywhere. He examined her dress, shaking out the folds. Nothing!

Bidding her stay where she was, lest by some chance it might be stuck somewhere in her clothes, he came out in the corridor, hunting along to the elevator, rang for the elevator, searched its floor, and came down in it. Then he burst out of it, like a bombshell, calling to the attendants to help in the search.

“A pearl—a big round pearl. I gave a large sum for it to-day. It's gone. One hundred pounds to whoever finds it!”

But it was not to be found. Out in Savoy Court you might have seen men who seemed to be hunting for mushrooms by lamplight—a quest that would have been just as fruitful. It was gone—and it was not insured.

He was thirteen years and some months old, but Patrick Sweeny did not look it. He had been stunted by environment and heredity. Patrick at the moment was coming to the end of a perfect day. He had played truant from school, earned sixpence by taking a message for a shady-looking man to a shady public house, which message had caused two other shady-looking gentlemen to arise and go forth in a hurry, only to fall into the arms of the police—fished for sharks with a bent pin, until he had been ordered away by the police from the landing stage near Cleopatra's Needle; seen a corpse being brought ashore at Westminster Bridge, received, after an hour's vigil outside the tobacco shop, close to Charing Cross underground station, two cigarette cards, one telling the history of the Gloire de Dijon rose and the other the history of the Discobolus, both illustrated; stuffed himself with gumdrops and two chocolates and seen a dog run over.

That was all mixed and good and brought him to lighting-up time and the news of the day exhibited by the newspaper sky signs. Here he learned that Trojan had won at Kempton Park, and that Mussolini had sent a message to the League of Nations, and that Lloyd George was suffering from a chill at Churt.

Divided between Fleet Street and the West, he chose the latter and was rewarded by a taxicab accident at Piccadilly Circus. `

Theater—turning-out time found him now in the Strand, and, coming along by the Strand Theater, the eyes that took in everything in heaven and earth and on the pavement saw a big white bead, which was promptly pouched, also a cigarette end that lay a little farther on, which he stuck in his mouth and lit with a moldy old match.

Then came the thought of home and Cassidy's Rents.

Cassidy's Rents were not closed for the night; in fact, when Patrick arrived, Billy Meehan, a person of his own age, was just arriving home from the opera—at least, from in front of the opera house in Covent Garden, where he had had no luck; and Pat's mother had only just gone to bed in the room which his father, his mother, himself and little Noreen called their home.

The door was on the latch, for they are all honest people there. Anyhow, there's nothing to steal. The elders in bed were asleep and snoring, like two people chloroformed and taking the anesthetic badly. But Noreen, eleven years old, in the rag bed on the floor near the window, was not asleep.

A wee white face showed in the moonlight. She was half sitting up on her elbow. She had been waiting for Pat, for he generally brought her something. As he took off his old boots, before getting into bed beside her, fully dressed as he was, the whisper came in the moonlight: “What 'a' ye got me?” Her demand was followed by the answer: “Cards—and them.” He put the dirty paper bag holding three last gumdrops in her hand. Then he remembered the bead and handed it to her.

It made her forget the gumdrops.

It looked beautiful in the moonlight. It was like a little vague lamp, and it held the sick child. For she was very sick, so that she forgot to ask for the cards. And Pat forgot them, too, for he was in bed beside her now, snuggling down under the old quilt, and almost at once he was sleeping a sleep that many a rich man would have bought at a pound a minute.

Not only did the bead look like nothing else, but it felt like nothing else, so smooth and friendly and warm. She noticed the little hole in it and guessed it was meant to put on a string; but she did not want it on a string; she only wanted to hold this lovely bead and look at it and turn it about and feel it.

Then the fear came to her that Pat would want it back. Pat was that sort; though good-hearted enough, he had taken back several things he had given her.

She fell asleep with it in her hand, and it was there when she awoke in the morning, her father gone to work, her mother scolding Pat who was pulling on his boots, and the sun shining through the dirty window.

It looked even more beautiful when she had a peep at it in the daylight, when her mother's back was turned. Some days later when Mrs. Sweeny asked her:

“What are you hidin' under the pillow, Noreen?”

“Nothin', mummy. It's only an old bead Pat give me, but don't tell him, or he'll be wantin' it back,” said Noreen.

And I doubt if Mrs. Sweeny would have taken it from her had she thought it of value, for Noreen was “going out.” And when some days later she was gone, far, let us hope, from Cassidy's Rents, her grubby little hand was holding something tight—her last plaything, which nobody tried to take from her—and rightly, had they only known, for she was the only person who had loved the thing for its beauty and for itself.

Yet all the same, true to the history of gems, it was tragic—this wealth in the hand of one who had died from tabes mesenterica—which is one of the many Latin names doctors give to poverty.