ngaree were found the largest and finest pearls in the whole
world.

These pearls grew within the shells of big oysters, and the people
raked the oysters from their watery beds, sought out the milky pearls
and carried them dutifully to their King. Therefore, once every year
His Majesty was able to send six of his boats, with sixty rowers and
many sacks of the valuable pearls, to the Kingdom of Rinkitink, where
there was a city called Gilgad, in which King Rinkitink's palace stood
on a rocky headland and served, with its high towers, as a lighthouse
to guide sailors to the harbor. In Gilgad the pearls from Pingaree were
purchased by the King's treasurer, and the boats went back to the
island laden with stores of rich merchandise and such supplies of food
as the people and the royal family of Pingaree needed.

The Pingaree people never visited any other land but that of Rinkitink,
and so there were few other lands that knew there was such an island.
To the southwest was an island called the Isle of Phreex, where the
inhabitants had no use for pearls. And far north of Pingaree--six days'
journey by boat, it was said--were twin islands named Regos and
Coregos, inhabited by a fierce and warlike people.

Many years before this story really begins, ten big boatloads of those
fierce warriors of Regos and Coregos visited Pingaree, landing suddenly
upon the north end of the island. There they began to plunder and
conquer, as was their custom, but the people of Pingaree, although
neither so big nor so strong as their foes, were able to defeat them
and drive them all back to the sea, where a great storm overtook the
raiders from Regos and Coregos and destroyed them and their boats, not
a single warrior returning to his own country.

This defeat of the enemy seemed the more wonderful because the
pearl-fishers of Pingaree were mild and peaceful in disposition and
seldom quarreled even among themselves. Their only weapons were their
oyster rakes; yet the fact remains that they drove their fierce enemies
from Regos and Coregos from their shores.

King Kitticut was only a boy when this remarkable battle was fought,
and now his hair was gray; but he remembered the day well and, during
the years that followed, his one constant fear was of another invasion
of his enemies. He feared they might send a more numerous army to his
island, both for conquest and revenge, in which case there could be
little hope of successfully opposing them.