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I Go A-P ear ling
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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-