THE GLAMOROUS ISLES
A
MAN cannot earn his
living without the tools of his trade. It was therefore only natural
that I should often lie awake during the long nights and think of
luggers and divers and pearls. Every day that I spent dealing in pearls
in London seemed to me mis-spent. I was straining at the leash.
Then
one day a dealer in gems whom I had known for years agreed to back me
for another venture. He and another friend of his were to come in with
me. They had to find between them $200,000 for the first year of
trading, and I was to be free to choose my field of operations. Best of
all, I was to sail the following week; there were to be no vexatious
delays.
Off
again in search of a fortune! I am an incurable optimist. This time I
was sure I would seize and hold it, and as like as not have my meeting
with that rogue Baer thrown in. I had not forgotten him.
Singapore
again. I had not seen much of it on my first trip because of the fever
from which I had been suffering, but now I explored every corner of the
town. I was to know it more intimately still in after years. Scores of
travelers have described it better than I could hope to do, but I may
say this: that the place, its people, its life, presented a picture
which had as potent a charm for me then as it has to-day.
Again
I met Leon the wooden-legged pearl-doctor, not in an Australian swamp
this time, but at a Kosher eating-house in one of Singapore's back
streets. He told me all his troubles. He too had tried to get a footing
in Broome, and the big bosses had run him out of town. He told me of
strange places he had been to since I pulled him and his wooden leg out
of the bog at Onslow on the West Australian coast. I reminded
3°
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