Chapter 31

I followed my uncle and Marama into the stateroom and closed the door behind me. Then I unrolled the tuck of my pareu, opened a knotted handkerchief and laid on the table the twin pearls of the tonu's cave. My uncle's dark brilliant eyes opened wide, his eyebrows went up, and he whistled a soft and long-drawn note. Without a word he took up first one pearl and then the other, turning them in his fingers and letting the light play over their gleaming and flawless surfaces. "By Jove!" he exclaimed at last. "You take …