The Pearl--Chapter 2--Costello

Spotted botete, the poison fish, lay on the bottom in the eel-grass beds, and the bright-colored swimming crabs scampered over them.

She gathered some brown seaweed and made a flat damp poultice of it, and this she applied to the baby's swollen shoulder, which was as good a remedy as any and probably better than the doctor could have done.

An accident could happen to these oysters, a grain of sand could lie in the folds of muscle and irritate the flesh until in self-protection the flesh coated the grain with a layer of smooth cement.

Above, the surface of the water was an undulating mirror of brightness, and he could see the bottoms of the canoes sticking through it.

Kino moved cautiously so that the water would not be obscured with mud or sand.

And as he filled his basket the song was in Kino, and the beat of the song was his pounding heart as it ate the oxygen from his held breath, and the melody of the song was the gray- green water and the little scuttling animals and the clouds of fish that flitted by and were gone.

But in the song there was a secret little inner song, hardly perceptible, but always there, sweet and secret and clinging, almost hiding in the counter-melody, and this was the Song of the Pearl That Might Be, for every shell thrown in the basket might contain a pearl.

Kino, in his pride and youth and strength, could remain down over two minutes without strain, so that he worked deliberately, selecting the largest shells.

The shell was partly open, for the overhang protected this ancient oyster, and in the lip-like muscle Kino saw a ghostly gleam, and then the shell closed down.

His heart beat out a heavy rhythm and the melody of the maybe pearl shrilled in his ears.

His eyes were shining with excitement, but in decency he pulled up his rock, and then he pulled up his basket of oysters and lifted them in.

You must want it just enough, and you must be very tactful with God or the gods.

Now Kino was reluctant to open it.

What he had seen, he knew, might be a reflection, a piece of flat shell accidently drifted in or a complete illusion.

Kino deftly slipped his knife into the edge of the shell.

The lip- like flesh writhed up and then subsided.

The lip- like flesh writhed up and then subsided.

It captured the light and refined it and gave it back in silver incandescence.

It captured the light and refined it and gave it back in silver incandescence.

And to Kino the secret melody of the maybe pearl broke clear and beautiful, rich and warm and lovely, glowing and gloating and triumphant.