HE other day in London the Southern Star, one of the largest and certainly the most beautiful of the world's diamonds, was put up for auction and "failed to realise any price." I forget what the bidding went to, nor does the amount matter beyond the statement that it was absurdly small.
The stone was too big. Too big to be worn in an ordinary way. Big diamonds are out of fashion, and this everlasting crystal holding in it the beauty and soul of sunrise was turned down.
This is not a treatise on jewellery else, leaving the Southern Star aside, I would quote many instances of lovely gems neglected, left in obscurity by Taste and only picked up at the dictates of fashion, or vice versa. The black pearl that was worth little till the Empress Eugenie made it sought after, the drop pearl that was worth much till women gave up wearing drop earrings, the opal that went out of favour less on account of superstition than of fad; a list long as the list of poets, painters, writers and sculptors, the intrinsic beauty of whose work was worth nothing till revealed by the eyes of some critic-seer.
This is the story of a pearl that came home, came at last to be appreciated for its beauty alone by a mind that knew nothing of its worth in the market-place.
Sulu Archipelago lying to the north of Borneo contains over 150 small islands, and the come from here. There is something in the water of the tropic seas that lends colour to the coral and special beauty to the pearl, and of all the seas, the sea of Sulu is most highly charged with this dynamic something that finds expression in beauty.
It was in 1882, when the old Sultan of Sulu was fighting the Spaniards, the same Sultan who sold his rights in the great bird's nest caves to the North Borneo Company, that Fleming, who had got hold of an old prahu and the service of a Sulu man whose name sounded like Nakardike, was fishing for pearls—illicitly. He had come in through the southern Sibutu passage and worked up as far as Cagayan Sulu, and it was amidst the tiny inlets north of here and in view of the palms of Cagayan that he was doing his fishing.
Now if you will look at the charts or at any large map, you will see that Sulu waters are almost as much enclosed as Tidal Basin. Five hundred miles by five hundred miles, they are hedged from the South China Sea by Palawan, from the Celebes Sea by Sibuguey and all the islands to Tawi-Tawi, from the Pacific by the Philippines—a vast blue basin, where the shark shared kingdom with an emperor who impaled men for pearling without a permit. Facts that did not in the east disturb Fleming in his fishing.
War prahus might break the horizon at any moment, or a boatful of Spaniards come along, men worse than the men of Sulu—it did not matter, it was all in the day's work. No law ran in these seas to save a lawless man from extreme punishment; it did not matter, only in the lawless seas could Fleming do his job—which was plunder in all its forms, from opium smuggling to . Broken in his last deal with the customs, he had come down to the Celebes, and with the profit of a lucky gamble at Mendao bought the fishing prahu and provisions for three men for four months—also the services of Nakardike and a Malay boy, Achmat.
A week ago, here, within sight of Cagayan, they had struck oyster ground and coach-whip fucus in six-fathom water, taking in six days three hundred pair of shells and ten pearls, six almost worthless, the others, at the prices ruling in those days, varying in value from five to twenty pounds apiece.
This evening, an hour before sunset, Fleming came on the great find.
Opening the last oyster of the take, a thing nearly as big as a soup-plate, he saw a bulge on the flesh near the hinge of the shell; dividing the muscle, he squeezed gently and, like a great white bubble, out came a pearl. It was enormous; weighing maybe a hundred grains and absolutely round, luminous and perfect.
Holding it in the palm of his wet and dirty hand, Fleming looked at it. Behind him Nakardike, naked as the new moon and dripping from his last dive, stood gazing down at it; Achmat, squatting on the deck near by, gazed too, and at the kriss which Nakardike had picked up from the deck where lay his loin-cloth and betel-box.
A passing gull cried out at them, the only sound breaking the silence of that sea stretching in 'the sunset towards the palms of Cagayan and the Sibutu passage.
Here was all Fleming wanted. He was up in pearls.