t piece of silver was
sinking fast and flashing as it turned over, while two merry little
young scamps were diving down after it, racing to see which would get
first to the coin. This soon disappeared in the disturbed water, while
the figures of the boys grew more and more shadowy and distorted by the
varying refraction.

"My word!" cried the doctor, "how the little niggers can dive! Look:
here they come again."

It was curious to see them rising with the water growing more still as
their frantic struggles ceased, and their forms grew plain as they rose
quickly, one dark head suddenly shooting up like a cork on a pike line
after the fish had rejected the bait, and its owner showing a
brilliantly white set of teeth as he shouted, "Nurrer! nurrer!"

The next moment a second head shot into the brilliant sunshine, the
boy's lips opening into a wide grin of delight as he showed his white
clenched teeth with the captured sixpence held between them.

"Tell him to put it in his pocket, Jack," cried the doctor. "Puzzle
him, eh? Hold your noise, you chattering young ruffians," he shouted.
"Come, a dozen of you. Here, Jack, I'm going to waste a shilling, for
it won't do the young vagabonds any good. It's only encouraging them to
run risks of asphyxiating themselves or getting caught some day by the
sharks."

He held up a shilling as he spoke, and quite a dozen boys of all sizes
splashed in out of canoes, and left the pieces of wood and one old boat
to which they clung. They came swimming about near where the doctor and
Jack looked over, shouting, splashing each other, and generally
clamouring for the piece of money to be thrown in.

"Ah! we must have a race for this," said the doctor, and he drew himself
up and made a feint of throwing the shilling.

There was a rush like a pack of black water spaniels going after a
thrown stick, but the boys had been tricked too often by passengers
stopping at Aden in the regular steamers, and they did not go far, but
turned round, treading water and shouting.

"Come back then," cried the doctor. "Here, close to the yacht."

In all probability the boys did not comprehend a word, but the gestures
made with the hand containing the shilling brought them all back, and
they ranged themselves in a line close in, and shouted and splashed away
till the doctor, whose left hand had been in his pocket, threw the
shilling shining and twinkling through the sunny air as far as he could.

Aw