Standing on the spring-board a few seconds to fill his lungs, the head-first diver suddenly plunges overboard and passes smoothly and rapidly through the water straight to the shoal below. Gathering quickly as many oysters as possible while his breath lasts, he places them in the net at his waist, attaches them to a convenient rope hanging from the boat's side and shoots to the surface. There he recuperates by lazily floating about if the water is shallow, if deeper, by climbing back into the boat for his next plunge. If diving in pairs, one rests while his partner dives. Expert divers who dive singly have an attendant, a manduck, who attends to the lines and looks out for his interests generally. The manduck drops a line with the oyster basket overboard and attaches to it another weighted with a forty to fifty pound stone. These are so fastened that they can be quickly released. The diver then drops into the water feet first and placing his foot in a loop in the line over the stone puts the basket on it, and releasing the lines, sinks to the bottom. Disengaging himself, he proceeds to fill his basket while the attendant pulls up the stone and adjusts it for the next descent. When ready to return he signals his attendant, and holding on to the line with the basket is drawn to the surface, occasionally accelerating his own return by climbing the rope hand over hand at the same time. He rests in the water by the boat's side until ready to dive again, making seven or eight descents before climbing into the boat for a longer rest and sun-bath. The divers of India, Arabia and the Red Sea are natives of the Madras Presidency, descendants of Arab fishers at Jaffna in Ceylon, Arabs, and Egyptian Negroes. They travel long distances to the fisheries and there are many of them between the Red Sea and Ceylon. At the last fishing in the Gulf of Manaar there were about forty-five hundred. Their dress during the time of the fishing consists of a loin cloth only. They have many hereditary and class superstitions, chief of which is their faith in shark-charmers. While waiting for the fishing to begin they also seek to get from the fates an inkling of the luck which will attend them. One common method is by breaking a cocoanut on the diving stone; the more clean and even the break, the better the luck. The mortality among divers at the fisheries is not great in Asiatic waters. Pneumonia is the greatest scourge, fatalities in diving being few. It is necessary however to select robust men for depths beyond forty feet; comparatively few can work without injurious effects below that.