I had my first look at the helmsman.

THE
PEARL LAGOON

By

CHARLES NORDHOFF

ILLUSTRATED BY
ANTON OTTO FISCHER

BOSTON
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY

COPYRIGHT 1924 BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS PUBLICATIONS
ARE PUBLISHED BY
LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
IN ASSOCIATION WITH
THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To

WALTER AND SARAH C. W. NORDHOFF

DEAR PARENTS AND UNDERSTANDING FRIENDS
WHOSE GRANDCHILDREN, I HOPE,
WILL ONE DAY READ
THIS BOOK

PREFACE

For some months past, my daily stint at the typewriterhas been cheered by an ambitious hope: that thisstory might prove entertaining to the young—thefinest of all audiences. They are too wise even to glanceat so dull a thing as a preface, but to you older people,who are responsible for what the young ones read, Ihave a word to say.

I make no claim, in the pages which follow, to havedone more than muster the familiar marionettes andput them through their paces before your eyes. In onerespect, nevertheless, I venture to commit myself. Iknow the islands fairly well—white man and native;skipper, trader, and pearl-diver; the sea, the lagoons,the small and lonely bits of land; and I can vouch forthe genuineness of the story's atmosphere.

As for the story, there is nothing in it which has nothappened, or might not happen to-day—for Romance,like the sea itself, is ever old and ever new.

C. N.
TAHITI, 1924

CONTENTS

I. The Coming of the Schooner
II. The Pearls of Iriatai
III. Aboard the Tara
IV. At Faatemu
V. Iriatai
VI. The End of the Shark—the Beginning of the Diving
VII. South Sea Fishermen
VIII. I Turn Pearl-Diver
IX. The Cave of the Shark-God
X. The Cholita Comes to Iriatai
XI. Piracy
XII. Boarders!
XIII. Tahiti

ILLUSTRATIONS

I had my first look at the helmsman . . . . . . Frontispiece

"You're Charlie, eh?" he said, when he had looked me upand down with a smile that took me back to the eveningsby our fireside, ten years before

The shark reared almost vertically beneath the swimmer and,opened his great ja