Page:Barbour--Joan of the ilsand.djvu/137

Rh his eyes he weighed out the thousand pounds.

"Ellis sailed off to Sydney, and the Australian met him there a year later, darn nearly down and out. He'd scooped up shell for six months and never got pearls enough to keep a mouse in cheese. If the Australian hadn't actually seen the niggers fetch up oysters containing pearls of course he'd have thought it was a plant, and there would have been some brisk shooting as likely as not. Old man Ellis kind of fretted about it—felt as though he'd sold a gold brick to a pal. Inside a week he'd fitted out a fresh expedition and taken the Australian off to Teipui, again, making him a partner. When they got there they started fishing within a hundred feet of the old spot, and the first day they got up a regular whopper—a black pearl, it was, worth a lot of money. They kept on working there for several months until the bed was fished out, and they made nearly enough money in that time to buy up a bank.

"So you see," Keith went on, refilling his pipe, "the only certain thing about it is that it's darn uncertain."

"It certainly is—uncertain," Chester agreed, "especially round about our reef. Maybe I'll give it another month, though. But if nothing comes of it I shall just be about dead broke by then."