The only way I can see to do it if you want to avoild the eval/die combo is to use $File::Find::prune. This appears to do the trick:

#! /usr/bin/perl -w

use strict;
use File::Find;

my @hits = ();
my $hit_lim = shift || 20;

find(
    sub {
        if( scalar @hits >= $hit_lim ) {
            $File::Find::prune = 1;
            return;
        }
        elsif( -d $_ ) {
            return;
        }
        push @hits, $File::Find::name;
    },
    shift || '.'
);

$, = "\n";
print @hits, "\n";
[download]

The only problem is that you don't have much control over the order in which File::Find descends through the various directories. (Hint: it is not alphabetical).

print@_{sort keys %_},$/if%_=split//,'= & *a?b:e\f/h^h!j+n,o@o;r$s-t%t#u'