"Would you like to go down in a diving-costume from a boat alongside the barque?" asks the biologist; "it's perfectly safe, and I have a dress that will fit you. Frequently I go to the bottom to study the curious growths there, and last season the colonial secretary did the thing two or three times." With a readiness of speech rivaling gunfire in promptness I nipped in the bud the preparations for carrying out the proffered courtesy, explaining that I was glad to accept a vicarious description of things at the ocean's bottom. The dingy fleet blossoms into a cloud of canvas, with every boat headed for Marichchikkaddi, the instant the "cease work" gun is fired. The scene suggests a regatta on a gigantic scale, and from a distance the leaning lug and lateen sails of the East give the idea of craft traveling at terrific speed. It is a regatta, a free-for-all, devil-take-the-hindmost affair. The prizes are choice berths on the beach as near as possible to the kottu, and the coolies who must carry the sacks of oysters see to it that the "tindal" and his sailors make no retarding error. The camp had been peaceful and somnolent while the boats were out; but the word that the fleet was coming in had roused every laborer, every petty dealer, speculator, and harpy to nervous activity. Everybody goes to the sea-front to witness the beaching of the boats and to watch the unloading. An hour probably elapses between the coming of the leader of the fleet and the arrival of the slowest boat. During this period the important functionary is the beach-master, who shouts his commands to boats seeking to crowd into positions not rightly theirs. When a boat is securely drawn upon the strand, there is no waste of time in getting the cargo started for the government storehouse. Muscular porters, glistening in their perspiring nudeness, go in single file between boat and kottu like ants executing a transportation feat. In a very few minutes the oysters are being counted by nimble-handed coolies. Important gamblers in oysters, men with sharp eyes and speculative instincts, have only to note the number of sacks delivered from one or two boats--and secure a hint from an obliging diver as to whether the bivalves are "thin" or "thick"--to arrive at a safe hypothesis of what the day's take has been, and also whether the oysters promise to be fairly pearliferous. The opinions of two or three of these experts make a basis for starting the prices at the auction in the evening, and these "sharps" are seldom wrong in their estimate of what would be a safe offer for a thousand chances in the great lottery of Asia. The count in the kottu is soon completed, and each boat's catch is divided into three piles, when an official selects two for the government, and the third is so expeditiously removed that a quarter of an hour later the share of the divers is being huckstered throughout the camp to small speculators.