the "pupil" dilate and contract. Shuddering, I handed the object back with a polite murmur.
He
told me the story (obviously there was one). It was in the days of his
grandfather, when a great pestilence had followed a war with the Sultan
and killed off the people. Even the fish had perished in that plague
and had floated on the sea in their thousands.
"Now the people became stupid because they thought that soon they would all be dead. The rice-paddies were neglected, the carabaos were
allowed to run wild, the fishing nets were in holes, the sails of the
boats stayed un-mended and the fishermen did not put to sea. My
grandfather was very sad. He had taught them all they knew, a better
way of planting, a better way of making their sails. He judged them and
led them in battle. When the prayers of the Imam and the fastings he
ordered availed nothing, then my grandfather knew that a strong magic
was working against them all.
"One
day he went down to the sea-shore alone. As he was walking along,
looking at the ground, he saw in the middle of a heap of dying seaweed
a single green eye. Then he saw it was not an eye, but a coconut pearl,
so he picked it up. He knew that the pearl did not want to be picked
up, for it fought against him, but he wrapped it up in his headcloth
and took it home. After that the pestilence stopped. And so my father
kept the coconut pearl as a hostage, and it gave him good counsel. It
will be an evil day for us when it is lost to us."
That was my memory of Palawan as I read the letter of a man from Brooklyn. Had he in truth obtained the
