It sounds like you want something more like File::Find::Object (update: or File::Next), which has an iterator interface, so you can stop fetching files whenever you want to. I've never used this module so I can't comment on it much. The docs also mention other iterator-based modules, which I haven't used either.

Alternatively, you could die in File::Find when you're done fetching (wrapping find() in an eval), but then you couldn't continue.