Page:Twenty Thousand Verne Frith 1876.pdf/227

 “What discovery?”

“This shell,” I said, displaying it.

“It is only an olive porphyry—genus, olive; order, pectinibranchal; class, gasteropodes; branch, mollusc.”

“Yes, Conseil; but instead of curving from right to left, this ‘olive’ turns from left to right.”

“Is it possible!” exclaimed Conseil.

“Yes, my lad.”

“A ‘sinister’ shell!”

“Look at the spiral.”

“Ah! Monsieur,” said Conseil, “I can believe it; but I have never had such an experience before.”

There was, after all, something to excite surprise. Everyone is aware that nature, as a rule, works as it were from right to left. The planets and stars, in their movements, go from right to left. Mankind use the right hand more than the left, and consequently all his instruments, &c., are made with the view of being employed as from right to left. Nature has generally carried out this principle in the “whorl” of shells. With very rare exceptions, they all have the spiral from right to left, and when by chance a “left-handed” whorl is discovered, it is worth its weight in gold.

“Conseil and I were engaged in the contemplation of our treasure, and I was anticipating its presentation to the museum, when a stone, only too well directed by a native, shivered the precious object in Conseil’s hands.

I uttered a cry of despair. Conseil seized my gun and levelled it at a savage who was swinging his sling about a dozen yards off. I tried to stop him, but he