THE PEARL FEST
The following day was Sunday, the fourth they had spent on Lost Island.
The nearest church was two and a half miles around the bay shore road,
at Eastport, but services were held in the open air stadium in the pine
grove back of the hotel. The cottagers and shore people attended here,
and the girls had been glad to go also. They tried to persuade Aunty
Welcome to accompany them, but she steadfastly refused to budge along
that bay shore road until she left for good.
“I’se hyar, and I knows I’se hyar, and I ain’t a-going to trust myself
to any quagmires and pitfalls along any ole shore road till I has to,”
she declared.
“Let’s stop for the Captain and the rest,” Polly said, as they came to
the quiet cottage at Fair Havens, but it was locked, so they went on.
The Captain usually took the big carry-all and drove over to the village
church. There he could sit, and look out of the window beside his pew,
straight into the little graveyard, where rows and rows of Carey
headstones bade him be of good cheer, for the harbor was sure, and the
Pilot faithful to His promise.
But the girls loved the open air service up in the pines. The stadium
had been erected for lectures and Chautauqua meetings during the summer
months, and was beautifully situated on Lookout Hill. On one side it
commanded a fine view over the Sickle, clear out to where the old
Atlantic rolled in in long, dark green combers. Behind it were climbing
aisles of eternal green, depths of sweet-scented thicket, patches of
wild flowers, and above all the towering pines, with their incessant
murmur as though they were answering their big brother, the sea.
The stadium was a great wooden amphitheater, built roughly but strongly,
and roofed to protect its audiences against sudden summer showers. The
second Sunday the girls had gone, there had been a thunder storm, and it
had seemed so strange to watch the trees lashed and torn by the tempest,
while they sat under cover safe as could be.
“I never was so near a storm, and yet out of it,” Sue had declared.
“Why, you could have reached out, and patted the wind on the back, and
it couldn’t have hurt you.”
After service they walked slowly down the winding, rustic walk that led
to the shore.
“It seems to me, girls, that the service sounds ever so much more solemn
here than it does in a church,” Isabel was saying. “It seems so much
nearer heaven here in the woods.”
“But it’s not, really,” Kate put in, briskly. “That’s only an idea that
people have, and I think it’s wrong. Supposing God dwelt only in the
high places, what would become of those who sit in darkness, and the
shadow of death?”
Polly was looking out to sea, her brown eyes thoughtful, and a bit sad.
She didn’t know why she felt sad, but she did, and only the Captain
seemed to understand why. He had said once over at the island that a
barometer probably had no idea what ailed it, but it ailed just the
same, and Polly’s temperament was just as volatile.
“The other day,” she said, musingly, “the Captain said he had been
tramping the beach one awful night in a thunderstorm, when he was first
on coast duty, and he felt troubled about all the boats that were in
peril. Then all at once he thought of those words, ‘He maketh His angels
spirits, and His ministers a flame of fire.’ And he felt strengthened
all at once, so he wasn’t afraid any more.”
“How do you do, girls?” called Mrs. Vaughan’s pleasant voice behind
them, and they turned to find her and the Doctor with Dorothy and Bess.
The Doctor was to take dinner at the hotel with the Commodore’s family,
but they all walked back through the pine grove together to the shore
road.
“Wasn’t the sermon nice?” asked Bess, happily. “I love that parable
about the merchant who sought pearls.”
The Doctor nodded his head.
“That simile is one of the finest in the Bible,” he responded. “I had
the good fortune to attend the pearl harvest at Ceylon twice, and it
sets one thinking, it certainly sets one thinking.”
“Oh, tell us about it, please, Doctor?” pleaded Polly, slipping her hand
on his arm. “I’ve been wondering about it ever since we left the
stadium. Are there any pearls around here?”
The Doctor was not a Yankee, but he usually answered one question by
asking another, in Yankee fashion.
“What are you all going to do this afternoon?”
“Rest, and write letters home, and talk. Crullers and Aunty Welcome will
take long naps. Sue and Ted will get out their book of class songs, and
sing and play all of them over five times running. Isabel will read a
book, and Ruth and I will write letters.”
“That’s all right; just as long as you had not planned to go sailing.
About four, Dorothy and Bess and I will come over in the _Natica_ and
talk to you about pearls. I have some unset ones I will show you.”
“Is it true that they lose their luster, and people put them back into
the sea to regain it?” Kate inquired.
“Well, people do it, but I don’t know whether it helps them any. A pearl
merchant will tell you it is better to peel a pearl, but that is not so
romantic, is it? There was one Empress, you know, who sent her casket of
pearls every year to be immersed in the sea. Now, don’t ask any more
questions until this afternoon, then we’ll hold a talk _fest_.”
“No, a pearl _fest_,” Polly suggested. “And we’ll have a driftwood fire
on the beach after dark, and toast marshmallows, and eat hermits.”
“Will you tell me what hermits are?”
“I had rather leave that to Aunty Welcome, for she makes them, you
know,” laughed Polly.
They caught up with the carry-all on their way back, and walked beside
it on the path next the road. The Captain looked different without his
uniform, all dressed in a suit of sober black, but he was as rosy and as
twinkly-eyed as ever, and he looked over the girls with a feeling of
pride.
“You’re getting to be a credit to the sou’west shore,” he told them.
“Trig and taut as a fleet of clipper-built coasters, be’ant they,
mother? But you keep away from the Point, now mind. There’s a reef out
there that at low tide would rip up a keel like a submarine mine hitting
a Russian man-o’-war. And any sort of a west gale would blow you
straight out on it.”
“But there aren’t any gales,” said Sue.
“Not yet, but wait a bit. We’ll be into August shortly, and then, I tell
you, look out. There’s some quick fellows come a’racing out of the
sou’west that would take your heads off.”
“I wish we could get out into the open sea, though, before we go home,
Captain Carey,” said Polly, wistfully. “We’re only shore sailors.
Couldn’t we go out around the Point some fair day, and reach the open?”
The Captain put his head a bit on one side, and trailed the tasseled end
of the whip between the colt’s ears. Then he shook his head.
“You’d better not. That’s the safest way. If you want a good sail
outside the harbor, I’ll take you for one on a top master, forty foot
long, yes, I will. Billy Clewen, the station keeper, has one, and we’ll
sail clear out to Tarker’s Light. How’s that?”
“Beautiful,” the girls cried, and Polly added, “Don’t you forget, now.”
“Father never forgets anything,” Mrs. Carey spoke up, contentedly,
“excepting his place in the hymn-book, and in the Bible reading for each
Sunday.”
Then they all had a good laugh at the Captain, who was famous for losing
his place, and would be far ahead or far behind when the congregation
were just moving along easily.
“Avast there, where are you bound?” he would whisper to Nancy, and nudge
her to show him the right place.
“How’s an old fellow to know where they’re going to bring up next?” he
asked, indignantly. “They never hold true to their course, and they are
tacking before I know it, and off they go like a herring from a hook.”
“I thought they caught herring in nets,” said Crullers.
“They do,” agreed the Captain, heartily. “And that’s why you can’t make
one stay on a hook. They’re the most notional fish I ever saw. I’ve had
one get on a hook, and fairly wink me in the eye, and wiggle off again.”
“Benjy Carey!” exclaimed Mrs. Carey, “and you a-coming direct from
meeting to tell a yarn like that!”
But the Captain only laughed until he coughed, and Nancy had to pat him
on the back.
That afternoon the yacht club entertained in its own, particular
fashion. Nancy came over, but Tom went down to the station with his
father. Some day he meant to go on duty there too. It was one of the
Captain’s boasts that three generations of Careys had patrolled that
strip of rock-strewn coast, “and there’s another one in the making,” he
always added; so Tom would square his shoulders and try to look like one
of the crew.
The doctor dined at the hotel that day with Commodore Vaughan and his
family, and it was late afternoon before the girls caught sight of the
white motor boat cutting its way across the sparkling waters of the
sunlit bay. The broad veranda looked very cool and restful that
afternoon. Polly and Kate had spread all the available mats and had
carried out the round table from the sitting-room, dropping new
magazines over it invitingly, with a pitcher of fruit lemonade and a
plate of hermits to nibble on.
“Hermits, do you call these?” asked Bess, as she bit into her third one.
“I never heard of them, but they’re just dandy.”
“Well, there are hermits and hermits,” Polly explained. “But Aunty
Welcome’s are the best we’ve ever had, much better than Annie May’s at
the Hall. How do you make them, Aunty?”
Welcome paused in the kitchen doorway, her hands on her broad hips, her
brown eyes fairly shining with delight at their appreciation of her
cooking.
“I takes some flour, and den I takes some ’lasses, and it has to be good
’lasses. None ob dis syrupy trash dat just drizzles down. I want ’lasses
you can hyar go kerflop when it hits de dish; yas, I do.” She shook all
over with laughter. “Den I takes some cream, den I takes some spices,
and some brown sugar, and some eggs, and I mixes ’em up good. Den I jes’
puts in all de ’vailable fruit I got lying ’round, raisins, and
currants, and citron, and figs, and dates, and nuts, any ole thing. And
den I bakes ’em.”
“And we eat ’em,” concluded Sue, forcibly.
Even the doctor shook with laughter over the recipe.
“But I’m afraid if we tried to make some, Aunty, we’d make a failure of
it,” he said. “And they are certainly fine. Please may I have some
marmalade with mine?”
“Now tell about the pearl harvest,” prompted Ruth, when they were all
fairly settled, and the supply of hermits had diminished somewhat. “What
is it like?”
“How often have you been there?” added Kate.
“Twice. Last year and once when I was a youngster just out of college,
and bent on globe-trotting. Ceylon, you know, is the great pearl market
of the world, and yet the season of the catch lasts only six weeks. But
during those six weeks, instead of a long, jungle-fringed beach, there
rise the tents and houses of the pearl seekers, like a city of magic.
Every morning you can see the long boats go out, hundreds of them, and
each carrying from sixty to seventy men.”
“Divers?” asked Polly.
“Not all. Some are rowers, and some take care of the catch as the divers
bring it up. They are all natives, and trained to the work. When they
dive, all they carry down with them is their basket and a small tortoise
shell clip that holds their nostrils closed.”
“Don’t they have to wear diving suits?” asked Ted.
“No. They can stay under water longer than any human beings I have ever
seen. And after the catch of the day is brought in, it is put up at
auction, and then there is excitement enough to satisfy anyone. I have
often wondered why some artist has never put the scene of the pearl
harvest on canvas;” the doctor’s eyes were half closed, as if he could
recall it perfectly even then. “I have seen as many as five million
oysters piled there, waiting to be sold, and to the crowd it is one
great lottery. Any shell in the lot may contain a pearl worth thousands.
So they scramble, and push to get up close to the auctioneer, and even
the children will beg you for pennies so that they may buy a handful of
the shells and have the fun of opening them. Last year while I stood
there, a little old man in front of me, with a crutch, turned and begged
me to lift him up so the auctioneer would be sure to see him. He was a
Burmah merchant and told me afterwards he was sent every year to buy for
the native princes. Behind me was a tall, quiet Persian. They told me he
had found a pearl once years before that brought him over seventy
thousand dollars. It was a pink one, and flawless. And he had come every
year since and bid on every day’s catch in the hope of finding its
mate.”
“Oh, I’d love to be there,” cried Polly her eyes sparkling with
excitement. “And do they open them right in front of you so you can see
them find the pearls?”
“Some do. And when a pearl of great price is found, even to-day the
bidding jumps like magic over that catch the same as in the old days of
the parable. The merchants will still go and sell all they have to buy
the one pearl if they can get it.”
“I wonder why it is everybody loves pearls so,” said Ruth thoughtfully.
“I do myself, better than diamonds, or any of the colored stones. They
seem different, almost as if they had life. Were they ever alive inside
the shells, Doctor Smith?”
“Let me see,” mused the doctor. “Are pearls alive? I’ve wondered that
myself. The scientists tell us, though, that a pearl is a disease of the
oyster, and others say it is only a grain of sand that has slipped
inside the shell and irritates the mollusc, so it wraps it about with a
secretion of its own that hardens and, after a while, you have the
pearl. The Chinese open oyster shells and slip inside tiny images of
Buddha, and the oyster covers them with mother-of-pearl.”
“Oh, Polly, don’t you know how we studied last year about the Malays,
and their pearl legend?” exclaimed Ted, eagerly. “They say at the full
of the moon the pearl oyster rises to the surface of the water and opens
its shell, and a dew drop falls into it, and is crystallized. And they
say the pearl is colored by the weather at the time it was born. If the
night is clear, the pearl is perfect, and if it is cloudy, the pearl
will be opalescent and dim, and if there’s a flash of lightning, the
shell shuts up instantly and the pearl will be dwarfed.”
“It makes me think of the Polynesian way of catching pearls,” said the
doctor. “They send out a long boat at sunrise, a canoe, with some old
tribesman playing a weird, plaintive melody on a sort of flute, to scare
away evil spirits. Young girls are chosen to dive for the shells,
generally the fairest and purest in the village and they poise
themselves in the prow of the canoe and dive just as the sun rises.”
“I shall try it to-morrow morning,” said Polly promptly, her eyes
dancing with mischief. “Ted and Sue shall play on their mandolins for
me, and I will dive for pearls.”
“And you dare to call me vain,” teased Isabel. “I guess if anyone is to
dive, I will.”
“Let’s all dive,” suggested Kate, the peacemaker, laughing. “Tell us
some more, please, doctor, and don’t mind these giddy creatures.”
Ruth leaned forward, reflectively, her eyes dreamy and full of thought.
“Polly,” she said, “didn’t Mary Stuart love pearls? Didn’t she always
carry a rosary of pearls with her, and didn’t we read some place that it
was found clasped in her hands after she was killed?”
“Here, child, stop talking about such gloomy things,” Ted interposed,
briskly, lifting the tall pitcher of fruit lemonade. “May I pour you
another glass, doctor? It’s delicious. Polly dissolved some pearl dust
in it, and dreamed she was Cleopatra.”
“I never heard sech talk in all my born days, doctah, I never did,”
exclaimed Aunty Welcome, putting her head out rebukingly. “Ain’t dey a
lot ob crazy creeturs, sah?”
“Full of the joy of life, Welcome, full of the springtime,” replied the
doctor, happily. “Let them alone. I can stand it. Give me some more
pearl dust elixir, Miss Edwina.”
“Pearls stand for tears, really and truly,” said Dorothy, seriously.
“I’ve always heard that. The night before the king was killed,
Marguerite of Valois dreamed all her diamonds had turned to pearls, our
history teacher told us.”
“Stop it,” Ted insisted. “Can’t you see how melancholius-like Polly and
Ruth are looking? I shall be afraid, pretty soon, to touch a pearl with
a ten-foot pole, even if I find one in my oyster stew.”
“Don’t mind them, doctor,” said Polly, cheerfully. “The pearl is my
birthstone, and I love it dearly, and you won’t find me weeping often.
See, it’s past sundown now. We’re going to set fire to that pile of
driftwood down on the beach, and toast marshmallows around it, while the
glee club holds forth.”
“Just one minute,” called the doctor, as they rose. “I want you to look
at this.”
The girls gathered around his chair, as he drew a tiny packet from his
pocket, wrapped in tissue paper, and unfolding it disclosed several
unset pearls, large as peas, and rarely beautiful.
“Do you carry them with you like that?” asked Kate.
“Just like that,” replied the doctor, blithely, and he let them roll
about in the palm of his hand. “I bought them at the pearl harvest, and
I like to have them close to me. They say that Napoleon, when he sat and
dreamed of the conquest of the world, loved to feel unset pearls slip
through his fingers. So, why not I?”
“Oh, they are lovely!” Polly touched them lingeringly. “Isn’t it too bad
that such things should be shut up in a shell at the bottom of the
ocean?”
Ruth was calling to them to hurry, for the marshmallows were waiting to
be cooked, and the fire was started, and as they walked down to the
beach the doctor quoted:
“‘Full many a gem of purest ray serene, the dark, unfathomed
caves of ocean bear,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its
sweetness on the desert air.’”
“I think those pearls in your pocket are just as hidden and wasted,
doctor,” said Sue, deliberately, “as if they were in a dark, unfathomed
cave.”
“Do you? Well, it was kind of you not to say as if they were cast before
swine,” laughed the doctor.
“One of Sue’s charms is her engaging frankness,” put in Kate.
“I forgive her, for it’s in a good cause. And some day, if I find anyone
who will love and cherish them more than I do, I may give up one.”
[Illustration: “First Batch of Marshmallows Ready!” Called Ruth]
“First batch of marshmallows ready,” called Ruth, and the pearl _fest_
was over.