The Black Pearl Read Online Free PDF

canoe, so I tied it to the stern and paddled out of the cave.
    Across the lagoon I could see the old man standing among the trees. From time to time during the day I had caught glimpses of him standing there with his eyes fixed on the cave. I knew that I could drown and he would not try to save me, and that he was telling El Diablo all the while that he had not wanted me to go to the cave and that he therefore was not to blame. But I also felt that if I found a pearl he would be willing to take his share because he had nothing to do with finding it.
    He came out from the trees as I paddled across the lagoon and strolled down to the beach as if he did not care whether I had found a pearl or not. I suppose this was to show El Diablo and his friends the fish and the long, gray shark that Soto Luzon was without blame.
    "A big one," he said when I dragged the shell ashore. "In my life I have never seen such a monster. It is the grandfather of all oysters that live in the sea."
    "There are many in the cave bigger than this one," I said.
    "If there are so many," he answered, "then the Manta Diablo cannot be mad that you have taken only one of them."
    "Perhaps a little mad," I said and laughed, "but not much."
    The mouth of the oyster was closed and it was hard to put my blade between the tight edges of the shell.
    "Lend me your knife," I said. "Mine is blunted from use."
    The old man placed his hand on the hilt of his knife and pulled it from the sheath and then slipped it back again.
    "I think it is better if you use your own knife," he said and his voice began to tremble as he spoke.
    I wrestled a long time with the oyster. At last the hard lips began to give a little. Then I could feel the knife sink through the heavy muscles that held them together and suddenly the lips fell apart.
    I put my finger under the frilled edge of the flesh as I had seen my father do. A pearl slid along my finger and I picked it out. It was about the size of a pea. When I felt again, another of the same size rolled out and then a third. I put them on the other half of the shell so they would not be scratched.
    The old man came and leaned over me, as I knelt there in the sand, and held his breath.
    Slowly I slid my hand under the heavy tongue of the oyster. I felt a hard lump, so monstrous in size that it could not be a pearl. I took hold of it and pulled it from the flesh and got to my feet and held it to the sun, thinking that I must be holding a rock that the oyster had swallowed somehow.
    It was round and smooth and the color of smoke. It filled my cupped hand. Then the sun's light struck deep into the thing and moved in silver swirls and I knew that it was not a rock that I held but a pearl, the great Pearl of Heaven.
    "Madre de Dios," the old man whispered.
    I stood there and could not move or talk. The old man kept whispering over and over, "Madre de Dios."
    Darkness fell. I tore off the tail of my shirt and wrapped the pearl in it.
    "Half of this is yours," I told him.
    I handed the pearl to him, but he drew back in fear.
    "You wish me to keep it until we reach La Paz?" I said.
    "Yes, it is better that you keep it."
    "When shall we go?"
    "Soon," he said hoarsely. "El Diablo is away but he will come back. And his friends will tell him then about the pearl."

7
    W E DID NOT WAIT to eat supper. While I dragged the canoe into the water, the old man went up to the huts and came back with a handful of corn cakes. As we passed the cave, he touched his hat and mumbled something to himself, then dug his paddle into the sea. He had brought along another paddle, and this I used though my hands were so sore I could scarcely hold it.
    There was a half-moon shining, the currents were good and the wind was at our backs. By midnight we were nearing Pichilinque Bay and the lights of La Paz shown faint on the horizon. It was then that the old man suddenly looked over his shoulder. He had done this several times since we had left the lagoon.
    He lifted his arm and