"It was before the war.

Many strange things have happened in the world before the Boche broke loose with his dream of 'Deutschland ueber Alles.' I had been to Melville Island trying to match a pearl for the Devonshire necklace, and I went from the pearl fisheries to New Zealand, led there by rumours of the discovery of some wonderful black pearls.

It was, however, a wild-goose chase.

These rumours generally are.

One of the experts of the New Zealand Fishery Department had been exploring the Haurakai Gulf, and returned to Auckland with a number of black pearls, which he had found in an oyster-bed on one of the Barrier Islands.