ing
two thirds of the bivalves granted them by the government rule
controlling the fishery. The Kilakari divers observe a time-honored
custom of giving to their home mosque the proceeds of one plunge each
day.

Nature obligingly assists the workers on the banks by supplying a gentle
off-shore breeze at daybreak, which sends the fleet to the fishing
ground, six or eight miles from the shore. By two o'clock in the
afternoon a gun from a government vessel directs the boats to set sail
for the return. By this hour the breeze is accommodatingly from the sea,
and the fleet runs home with flowing sheets. Navigation, it will be
seen, plays a very subordinate part in Marichchikkaddi's marine
enterprise.

[Illustration: INDIAN PEARL MERCHANTS READY FOR BUSINESS]

With the exception of the divers from the Malabar coast, who plunge head
foremost from a spring-board, the men go into the water in an upright
position, and are hurried in their journey to the bottom by a stone
weighing from forty to fifty pounds. Each diver's attendant has charge
of two ropes slung over a railing above the side of the boat: one
suspends the diving-stone, and the other a wide-mouthed basket of
network. The nude diver, already in the sea, places the basket on the
stone and inserts one foot in a loop attached to the stone. He draws a
long breath, closes his nostrils with the fingers of one hand, raises
his body as high as possible above water, to give force to his descent,
and, loosening the rope supporting the weight, is carried quickly to the
bottom. An Arab diver closes the nostrils with a tortoise-shell clip,
and occasionally a diver is seen whose ears are stopped with
oil-saturated cotton. The manduck hoists the weight from the bottom and
adjusts it for the next descent. Meanwhile, the diver, working face
downward, is filling the basket with oysters with speed. When the basket
is filled or breath exhausted, the diver signals, and is drawn up as
rapidly as possible by the rope attached to the basket, and a specially
agile diver facilitates the ascent by climbing hand over hand on the
line When a man has been in the water half an hour, and made perhaps
seven or eight descents, he clambers aboard the boat for a rest and a
sunbath, and in a few minutes is taking part in the interminable chatter
of the Orient.

A diver coming up with basket filled wears a face of benign contentment;
but when the oysters are few and far between, as they are oftentimes,