"It is a pleasure," said the Jew, shaking my hand warmly, "to meet the nephew of my old friend. I have been aboard the Tara this afternoon and have heard much of you! They told me you had been diving with the natives--a wonderful experience, young man, but dangerous, _hein_? Ah, those sharks--those great man-eating fish--it is _épouvantable_!" He shuddered delicately, offered my uncle a cigarette from a case of tortoise-shell, and blew out a cloud of perfumed smoke. "Yes," he went on, "Monsieur Selden has told me how old Maruia's kinsman was taken by the tonu, and how you dove down to the cave for the old oysters your native boy had seen. And he said that if I came here this afternoon you might show me the matched pearls you found that day." "I have them here," put in my uncle, drawing the familiar tobacco-tin from his pocket. "We'll show them to Sikorsky, eh? Perhaps he'll want to make you an offer." He drew up three chairs about a table close to the window, and pulled back the blinds to admit the afternoon sunlight into the room. Then he opened the little box and laid the pearls side by side on the green tablecloth. "Well, what do you think of them?" he asked. "You've never seen a finer matched pair, eh?" For a moment Sikorsky lost his urbane composure. His black eyes glittered and his hand trembled a little as he reached out to take up the pearl nearest him. As he turned it over and over in his palm, admiring the perfection of its form and the play of light on its flawless surfaces, he muttered to himself in a language I had never heard. Presently he laid down the first pearl and took up the other for examination; rose to fetch a black leather case from a corner of the room; laid out his jeweler's scales and measuring instruments. Without a word to us, he weighed and measured to his satisfaction, took out writing-materials and covered a sheet of paper with the figures of a complex calculation. Then he took up the pearls for a last glance, and leaned back, lighting another of his perfumed cigarettes. "There is no need of beating about the bush," he said. "You know pearls, Selden--such a pair does not turn up twice in a lifetime. They would make a gift for an empress! It has been a privilege to see them, even though nothing comes of it. If they were mine, I would go hungry before I would part with them!" "What are they worth?" asked my uncle. "Ah, that is hard to say--they are for sale?" "Yes, at a price; I would buy them myself if I could afford to own such luxuries." "I will make you an offer, then, though the responsibility is more than I am authorized to take. They are matched almost to the weight of a hair--Let me see--for one of them, alone, I could safely offer you twelve thousand dollars. Double that for the matching--forty-eight thousand for the pair--Yes--I will make my offer fifty thousand." He raised his hand as my uncle was about to speak.