NICK CARTER STORIES _Issued Weekly. Entered as Second-class Matter at the New York Post Office, by_ STREET & SMITH, _79-89 Seventh Ave., New York. Copyright, 1915, by_ STREET & SMITH. _O. G. Smith and G. C. Smith, Proprietors._ Terms to NICK CARTER STORIES Mail Subscribers. (_Postage Free._) Single Copies or Back Numbers, 5c. Each. 3 months 65c. 4 months 85c. 6 months $1.25 One year 2.50 2 copies one year 4.00 1 copy two years 4.00 =How to Send Money=--By post-office or express money order, registered letter, bank check or draft, at our risk. At your own risk if sent by currency, coin, or postage stamps in ordinary letter. =Receipts=--Receipt of your remittance is acknowledged by proper change of number on your label. If not correct you have not been properly credited, and should let us know at once. =No. 143.= NEW YORK, June 5, 1915. =Price Five Cents.= THE SULTAN’S PEARLS; Or, NICK CARTER’S PORTO RICO TRAIL. Edited by CHICKERING CARTER. CHAPTER I. THE MAN WHO WAS LOST. “Man overboard!” Nick Carter--known to the captain and crew of the tramp steamer _Cherokee_ as Sykes, the bos’n--heard this shout, taken up by man after man, as he lay stretched out on the foc’s’le head, in the early morning, just as the ship nosed her way into San Juan harbor, on the northern coast of Porto Rico. The thrilling warning that somebody has fallen into the sea, which always sends a shock through both crew and passengers whenever heard, does not permit any ordinary person to remain quietly dozing. The famous detective was one of the first to rush over to the side of the ship when the alarm had been given. Close by him were his two assistants, Chick and Patsy Garvan, who, in the rôles of common sailors, had come down to Porto Rico to help him get back the fortune in jewels which had been stolen from Stephen Reed, the well-known New York millionaire. “Who is it, chief?” asked Patsy, forcing his way to the front. “I haven’t heard.” “One of the crew, I suppose?” hazarded Chick. “No doubt. There is only one passenger on board now, Paul Clayton. It isn’t he, for there he is, behind you.” Meanwhile, under orders from Captain Bill Lawton himself, two life rings, each with some thirty fathoms of line attached, had been hurled over in the direction of where the drowning man might be expected to be. It was too dark to make out plainly anything in the water, but a sharp lookout was kept for an hour, until the vessel reached her anchorage and the “mud hooks” were let go. “Well, we couldn’t do any better,” grunted Captain Lawton, through his shaggy mustache, as he and his big, two-fisted first mate, Van Cross, stood together on the bridge. “We might have a roll call of the crew. I don’t know who it was went over. I reckon it wasn’t anybody who might have become President of the United States, nor nothing like that.”