An amusing incident was furnished last season by the arrival of a diver of some renown in India, who had participated profitably in several fisheries. Accompanied by his "manduck," the fellow had crossed from Paumben as a deck passenger on a British India steamer. When the vessel was anchored, the diver summoned a rowboat to take himself and traps ashore. Wearing nothing but loin-cloth and turban, the man descended the side-steps an example of physical perfection, and so thoroughly smeared with cocoanut butter that he shone like a stove-polish advertisement. The boat grounding on the shelving bottom a hundred feet from shore, this precious Indian, who was to pass a good share of the ensuing ten weeks in the water, even at the bottom of the sea, deliberately seated himself astride the shoulders of his manduck, and was borne to dry land with the care of one whose religion might forbid contact with water. He carried beneath one arm throughout the trip from the small boat a gingham umbrella, and under the other an Indian railway guide. There are neither wharves nor landing-stages at Marichchikkaddi. Even His Excellency the Governor must lay aside his dignity in going from his boat to the shore. The horde of people working about the pearling fleet, amphibious by nature, have little need for those accommodations and necessities which the commercial world call "landing facilities." The world over, gambling and speculation are joined in many ways to superstition; and the Eastern diver is superstitious to the hour of his death. At Marichchikkaddi he devotedly resorts to the mystic ceremony of the shark-charmer, whose exorcism for generations has been an indispensable preliminary to the opening of a fishery. The shark-charmer's power is believed to be hereditary. If one of them can be enlisted on a diver's boat, success is assured to all connected with the craft. The common form of fortune-tempting nowadays is for a diver to break a cocoanut on his sinking-weight just before embarking. If it be a clean and perfect break, success is assured; if irregular and jagged, only ordinary luck may be anticipated; and if the shell be broken in without separating into halves, it spells disaster, and the alarmed fisher probably refuses to go with the boat.