to
Para. She had intended to keep the secret of where these huge pearls
were to be obtained for her eldest son, but as he wisely preferred the
quiet life of a diamond merchant in Madrid to that of a pearl pioneer
in the wildernesses of Brazil, she handed on the chance of a fortune
to me. But somehow adventure has always kept me busy elsewhere!
Pioneering
does not pay. I mean it does not pay the pioneer. And those of my
family who have fared best have been the bread-and-butter men who did
not listen to the Lorelei-song of distant lands, but stayed in the
great gem-trading centres of London, Paris and New York. Nevertheless,
I have never, for my part, regretted that I have lived dangerously and
not spent my time accumulating a mountain of gold. Nor, I suppose, do
those who live and die exploring the far corners of the world really
regret having thus lived and thus died.
To
my mind there is nothing like the quest for gems at their source, which
will throw a man into the whirlpool of adventure and—if he has eyes to
see it—into the arms of romance itself. Adventure and romance usually
prove to be uncommonly uncomfortable at first-hand, but they are the
stuff of memory, and memories studded with gems, memories literally
bejewelled, are to me memories worth having indeed. More to the point
as far as my readers are concerned, they are memories worth sharing.
