AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA
On
almost every tropical sea that washes a shore near the equator, when
the time of storm is over, boats ride over the shallows, and men dive
from them for the pearl oyster as they have done for ages. Black slaves
for Arab masters in the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf: Tamil and
Singhalese in the Indian waters: Polynesians about the islands of the
South Seas: Indians and other natives along the Atlantic and Pacific
coasts of tropical America, and not a few white men in "dress" off the
coasts of Australia. Your pearls have seen the dusky man-fish come
silently and swiftly from the world of air to wrench the gaping shells
that held them, from their anchorage. It may be your pearl lay twenty
fathoms deep in the clear water of some lonely atoll in the great
Pacific, among branching coral, and found its way from water's
solitudes to the light of the Sun and admiring eyes by the hand of a
bright-eyed Polynesian. It may have come from Egypt or the Indies, from
Australia or Mexico; but from whatever quarter of the globe it came and
by whom, it was born and grew somewhere at the bottom of the sea.
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