The Black Pearl Read Free

Spain, or so he said, and therefore we called him the Sevillano.
    He was tall and his shoulders were so wide and powerful that they seemed to be armored in steel instead of muscle. His hair, which was gold-colored, grew thick on his head like a helmet. He had blue eyes, so blue and handsome that any girl would have envied them. His face was handsome, too, except that around his mouth there always lurked the shadow of a sneer.
    Besides this, nowhere on the Vermilion Sea could you find a better diver for pearls than Gaspar Ruiz. There were some who could stay under water for longer than two minutes, but to the Sevillano three minutes was an easy dive. And once when he had to hide from a large gray shark he was down four minutes and came up laughing.
    Also he was a great braggart about the things he had done in Spain and elsewhere. Not only did he brag about these things, but many of them were tattooed on his body. There was a picture in red and green and black ink of Gaspar Ruiz fighting an octopus that had a dozen tentacles. Another showed him thrusting a long sword into a charging bull. Still another showed him choking a mountain lion to death with his bare hands.
    These scenes were tattooed on his shoulders and arms and even on his legs, so that he looked very much like a picture gallery walking around.
    We had not sailed far that night before the Sevillano began to talk about himself. He sat with his back against the mast and told a long story of how he had once dived in the Gulf of Persia and there found a pearl bigger than a hen's egg.
    "What did you do with it?" my father asked.
    "I sold it to the Shah."
    "For much money?"
    "Much," said the Sevillano. "So much that I bought a pearling fleet of my own. It was larger than yours. Today I would be a rich man if it had not foundered in a bad storm."
    The Sevillano went on to tell about the storm, which must have been the greatest ever seen in the world, and how he saved his own life and the lives of his crew.
    Before I became a partner with my father, sometimes I used to see him on the beach when the boats went out or when they came in and sometimes in the plaza. He always had a group around him, listening to his tales, but somehow I felt that he was talking to me more than to the others. Once when I questioned him in fun about one of these tales that I knew to be a lie, he turned on me.
    "You do not believe that I tell the truth?" he said, clenching his teeth. Before I could answer,

    he said, "You are the son of a rich man and you live in a big house and you eat good food and all of your life you have done little. Nor will you ever do more."
    Too surprised to speak, I was silent. He watched me for a moment and then took a step toward me and lowered his voice. "Your father is a rich man. My father was a poor man whose name I do not know. From the time I could walk I have done something and in my life I have done many things and what I have done I talk about truthfully. So guard your tongue, mate."
    I mumbled an apology and walked away, but when he thought I was out of hearing I heard him say to his friends, "That one who just left us. Have you noticed the red hair that sticks up on his head like the comb of a rooster? Well, that comes from Africa. It is from the infidel blood of Moors and Berbers."
    I was about to turn around and confront him. He was older than I and stronger and he carried a knife at his belt, but it was not this that held me back. I knew that my father would think it an insult to the Salazar name for me to start a brawl in a public place, no matter what the cause. So I swallowed my pride and I walked on as if I had not heard.
    I said nothing to my father about this encounter, and afterward when I met the Sevillano I said nothing to him. I acted as if I did not remember what he had said to me or what I had overheard. And when I became a partner in the firm and he would come to the office to get his pay, I acted no differently. Yet I had not forgotten the