PEARLS AND PEARL-DIVING 



they are lucky, to satisfy their humble wants for the 

 remainder of the year. Some employers have a fixed rate 

 of payment ; others go on the profit-sharing principle, 

 each boat taking a fourth of the proceeds of its catch, 

 and the divers sharing that amount equally. 



Long before daylight the boats, hundreds of them, put 

 out, each of them rigged with a gigantic sort of lug-sail 

 and carrying a crew of from five-and-twenty to sixty, 

 including ten or more divers. Navigation in these waters 

 is a tolerably simple matter. There are no tides to speak 

 of, and the powerful coast currents which to a stranger 

 might be dangerous are known, every inch of them, 

 to the Sinhalese. 



Unfortunately for those interested in the pearl-fisheries, 

 this happy condition of the sea only exists from the last 

 week of February till the second of April, possibly the 

 end of April. By that time the hot season is over, and 

 the island, lying as it does in the course of the two 

 monsoons (the south-west till September and then the 

 north-east till January and February), is henceforth 

 subject to heavy seas such as no diver could descend in. 

 Hence the six weeks' season. 



On reaching the banks a signal-gun is fired and then 

 soundings are taken, though many of the fishermen know 

 the ground so well that this may often be a superfluous 

 measure ; still, as within the same half square mile, depths 

 of five and of a hundred fathoms can exist here, the 

 precaution is not to be wondered at. 



By daylight, the whole scene on the pearl ground is the 

 very antipodes of what is to be witnessed among a British 



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