RAROTONGA, May 24 (AFP) - A quarter of a century ago, people laughed at Tekake William as he rode his bicycle around Rarotonga and sold fish from a wheelbarrow to support his family. Today, at 68, the once penniless leper patient is king of the lucrative black pearl trade and the people who once tried to force him into exile now seek his help. "I'm very sorry for the people. If they had listened, the pearl industry would be far ahead than it is now," says William who willingly shares his knowledge on the business. Rather than harbour grudges for the way he was derided, William has poured his wealth into hospitals, schools, churches and "loans" to the many Cook Islanders wanting assistance. He is rich but he doesn't look it, walking around in cheap plastic sandles and wearing a worn T-shirt and scratched and bent sunglasses. William has built an empire and started a pearl industry here which now earns millions for the country, but he has never forgotten his childhood struggles when he owned just two pairs of pants. "One to wear every day and my mother would wash it every night and the other for church." Born in Tahiti on 25 February 1931, William was six years old when his family moved to Penrhyn in the northern Cook Islands. Five years later, when it was suspected he had leprosy, William was isolated with 20 other children and two men and sent to Leprosy Island, a tiny nearby islet. One of the men, known as "the caretaker" was responsible for administering injections, distributing weekly food rations and maintaining law and order. William recalls the dreadful punishments the caretaker meted out to the children. They were regularly locked in an airless shed known as the "dark room" for hours on end without food and water. "Not only was it dark, it was very hard to breathe inside." William was also beaten for picking coconuts when he was hungry. From Leprosy Island the boys were shipped to Fiji and cared for by Catholic nuns for three and a half years. It was in Fiji that William was almost killed by a Tongan man who held him underwater. The caretaker and the Tongan are "two people in my life I will never forget", he says. In 1946, 15-year-old William returned to Penrhyn to find his island a US army base and he was employed building an airport for three shillings a day. When the military left soon after, the enterprising William turned to pearl shells, being bought then for four pence a pound, "good money in those days". That decision would eventually transform the penniless northern islands of Penrhyn and Manihiki into leading black pearl producers. After learning about pearl farming in French Polynesia, William returned to Manihiki to begin his own farm, but was refused permission by the Island council. In 1982 a law was passed requiring all pearl divers and farmers to have permits. William applied four times and was knocked back on each occasion. Despite the rejection he set up three wooden platforms and began growing spats using the "haruharu method" -- branches of the ngangie tree which are placed in water, trapping pearl shell larvae that grow into spats. He also took his haruharu branches to every house in Manihiki and explained to people how they could double their production. No one was interested. "They should have believed me in the first place, but they didn't," William said. "I didn't keep anything a secret. Everything I learned I (would) say this is the way to do it, but they never listen." Driven by jealousy over William's pearl farming success, the Manihiki Island Council called a public meeting in the mid 1980s and tried to have him exiled. The people who stood up then and said he had to go have since turned to William for help many times. There is even talk of nominating him for a knighthood. When William was in his thirties a woman read his palm and said he would be a very important person. "Everything she read ... has come true," says William.  