When a dhow wishes to fit out the following is the procedure. The captain--who, like the majority of his class, is generally up to his neck in debt--waits on a pearl buyer to ask for an advance. The latter makes inquiries as to the size of the dhow, the crew, and other particulars. These completed to his satisfaction he issues supplies of rice, dates, and other food, with perhaps a dash in the way of solid cash, and in return the nachoda agrees that the buyer will participate in the profits of the dhow over a given period. The arrangement is generally thus: to the buyer, or financier, the return of all moneys expended, and after that one third of what remains; the remaining two thirds are divided equally between the captain on the one hand and the crew on the other. All preliminaries arranged the dhow puts to sea. There are no sleeping quarters provided for the crew, who sleep as best they can. But what does that matter in a climate where man for choice always sleeps in the open air, with the sky for roof. Cooking is done over a wood fire burning in an old barrel filled with mud or sand. When the pearling ground is reached the dhow is anchored from time to time and the canoe lowered. Into it descend a couple of divers armed with their nostril-closing devices, and the paraffin-tin with the glass bottom. One of the men presses this latter about an inch below the surface of the water, keeping his head inside the tin. The glass gives a clear unruffled surface through which he can see the bottom of the sea, on which he keeps a sharp look out for shells, or likely ledges. Should his trained eye sight anything, a motion of his hand to the other man, who is gently paddling, brings the canoe to a standstill. The diver adjusts his nose-iron, stands up and dives. Down, down, down he goes from ten to fifteen times the depth of water that could be measured between the tips of his fingers--from right hand to left--when the arms are extended at right angles to the body; for it is thus the divers measure depth. With a knife he quickly severs three pearl oysters from the rock, arranging them one under the left arm, one in the left hand, and one in the right palm, so that it will not interfere with the raising stroke of his arm, as he strikes out for the surface. Then up he comes, bringing with him what one diver graphically described to me as, "God alone knows." He may have found a pearl worth thousands of rupees; he may have two good pearls; he may have three bad ones, or, as often happens, he may have no pearls at all.