For
three days they worked below (it was an easy ground, no more than five
fathoms deep.) It was a wonderful spot. The oysters grew as close
together as bundles of bills in a banker's strong-room. The lugger
cleaned up for a month. Ohtami's share of the haul was more than seven
thousand dollars, an enormous fortune for him.
Now
he grew ambitious. He would have a lugger of his own. Two Moro
shipwrights built it for him on the Tulai beach, with the help of half
a score of Samals and within sight of Jolo market-place. By that time I
had appeared on the scene and saw her launched. I saw, too, the whole
run of Ohtami's luck. It lasted six years.
It
is a strange thing that whereas the Chinese coolie who becomes rich
rarely is overbearing, the newly prosperous Japanese often grows
insolent. Ohtami had no use for white men in the days of his
prosperity. On principle he would never go to see a white pearl buyer.
The buyer had to come to him as a petitioner for goods on which the
owner would fix no price. "How much you give this? " he wTould say, and whatever price was offered he would refuse it with a sneer.
His
distrust of the white man became a mania. It was impossible to deal
with him. Finally one trader began to go into his office, look over
Ohtami's collection, select the best piece and put a tip-top price on
it—a price he knew would not be accepted, because Ohtami would
certainly expect it to be bettered elsewhere. His conviction that all
the white dealers were rogues was confirmed when, naturally, no other
dealer would offer him anything like the first dealer's price. Pearl
after pearl, parcel after par-
