Conseil had just made a cast of the dragnet, and his gear had
come back up loaded with a variety of fairly ordinary seashells,
when suddenly he saw me plunge my arms swiftly into the net, pull out
a shelled animal, and give a conchological yell, in other words,
the most piercing yell a human throat can produce.
"Eh? What happened to master?" Conseil asked, very startled.
"Did master get bitten?"
"No, my boy, but I'd gladly have sacrificed a finger for such a find!"
"What find?"
"This shell," I said, displaying the subject of my triumph.
"But that's simply an olive shell of the 'tent olive' species,
genus Oliva, order Pectinibranchia, class Gastropoda, branch Mollusca--"
"Yes, yes, Conseil! But instead of coiling from right to left,
this olive shell rolls from left to right!"
"It can't be!" Conseil exclaimed.
"Yes, my boy, it's a left-handed shell!"
"A left-handed shell!" Conseil repeated, his heart pounding.
"Look at its spiral!"
"Oh, master can trust me on this," Conseil said, taking the valuable
shell in trembling hands, "but never have I felt such excitement!"
And there was good reason to be excited! In fact, as naturalists
have ventured to observe, "dextrality" is a well-known law of nature.
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