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Updated: June 9, 2025
To be brief, I was soon satisfied that I had stumbled upon a bed of pearl-oysters, about half of the bivalves yielding when opened more or less pearls, the greater quantity being small, such as are set in rings; but several good-sized pearls were also found, and one magnificent fellow, as large as a cherry.
And so we did; for when we reached the spot we found our neatly arranged rows of oysters turned topsy-turvy by the birds in their endeavours to get at the fish, while the odour that emanated from the millions of dead bivalves was already powerful enough to upset any but a strong stomach.
"My worthy Ned," I answered, "to the poet, a pearl is a tear of the sea; to the Orientals, it is a drop of dew solidified; to the ladies, it is a jewel of an oblong shape, of a brilliancy of mother-of-pearl substance, which they wear on their fingers, their necks, or their ears; for the chemist it is a mixture of phosphate and carbonate of lime, with a little gelatine; and lastly, for naturalists, it is simply a morbid secretion of the organ that produces the mother-of-pearl amongst certain bivalves."
In the Secondary or Cainozoic formations the preponderance of the higher grade of bivalves becomes more and more marked, till in the tertiary strata it approaches that observed in the living creation.
We gathered a bushel with our hands in a very few minutes; but as the wind commenced to blow most spitefully, and the heavy forests of palms on the low shore offered a pleasant shelter, we disembarked about sunset in a magnificent grove of palmetto-trees, spending a pleasant evening in feasting upon the delicious bivalves, roasted and upon the half shell.
We were to hunt seals, and fish, and pry bivalves from the rocks at low tide, and build fires, and talk, and alternate between suspicion and security, between the danger of sedition and the insanity of men without defined purpose, world without end forever. The inevitable happened. One noon Pulz looked up from his labour of pulling the whiskers from the evil-smelling masks.
Bertie who believed in bivalves but not in heroics, thought it best to take the oysters first and eschew the despair entirely. He had one unchangeable quality insouciance; and he had, moreover, one unchangeable faith the King. Lady Guenevere had reached home unnoticed after the accident of their moonlight stag-hunt.
Molly had never before seen shell-fish growing on trees, so Dick cut a few oyster-bearing branches from a mangrove tree and roasted bunches of the bivalves on the beach.
The hard parts of the many animals which live upon the reef become imbedded in this coral limestone, so that a block may be full of shells of bivalves and univalves, or of sea urchins; and even sometimes encloses the eggs of turtles in a state of petrification.
Samivel, my boy, always stick to the shop; and if ever you become a millionhair, like me, never be seduced by any womankind into enterin' fash'nable society, and moving among the circles of bong tong. I envies you, Samivel. You don't know what a treat it is to me to be admitted confidentially behind the counter, and to find myself surrounded once more by these here congenial bivalves.
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