East of Suez / Ceylon, India, China and Japan

by Frederic Courtland Penfield

With the exception of the divers from the Malabar coast, who plunge head foremost from a spring-board, the men go into the water in an upright position, and are hurried in their journey to the bottom by a stone weighing from forty to fifty pounds. Each diver's attendant has charge of two ropes slung over a railing above the side of the boat: one suspends the diving-stone, and the other a wide-mouthed basket of network. The nude diver, already in the sea, places the basket on the stone and inserts one foot in a loop attached to the stone. He draws a long breath, closes his nostrils with the fingers of one hand, raises his body as high as possible above water, to give force to his descent, and, loosening the rope supporting the weight, is carried quickly to the bottom. An Arab diver closes the nostrils with a tortoise-shell clip, and occasionally a diver is seen whose ears are stopped with oil-saturated cotton. The manduck hoists the weight from the bottom and adjusts it for the next descent. Meanwhile, the diver, working face downward, is filling the basket with oysters with speed. When the basket is filled or breath exhausted, the diver signals, and is drawn

up as rapidly as possible by the rope attached to the basket, and a specially agile diver facilitates the ascent by climbing hand over hand on the line When a man has been in the water half an hour, and made perhaps seven or eight descents, he clambers aboard the boat for a rest and a sunbath, and in a few minutes is taking part in the interminable chatter of the Orient.

A diver coming up with basket filled wears a face of benign contentment; but when the oysters are few and far between, as they are oftentimes, and the man has prolonged his stay below to the limit of his air supply, his head is out of water not many seconds before he is volubly denouncing the official control forcing him to work on a "paar" where little but sand exists, and his confrères on the boat hurl savage invective at any government functionary within earshot.

The powerful Eastern sun illumines the bottom sufficiently for a diver to plan his operations before going down, and nine days out of ten the overhead sun renders the sea sufficiently transparent to guide a boat's crew to promising anchorages. Pearling economists insist that dredging by machinery or the use of diving-suits can never compete with the simple and inexpensive method in vogue on the Manar banks. At Marichchikkaddi one hears frequent discussion of the time a diver may stay under water, and many improbable accounts of what has been done are told a visitor. An average Tamil or Moorman stays down not longer than forty-five seconds, while the broad-chested Arab thinks nothing of being under water from sixty to eighty seconds.

Depth has much to do with the time, and it is admitted that divers do not suffer unduly from the trying nature of their calling except when forced to work in unusually deep water. Seven or eight fathoms—about the average on the Ceylon banks—produces no injurious effect, but nine fathoms tell on all but men of sturdy build. Occasionally a declivity perhaps ten fathoms below the surface has to be fished, and this demands the service of picked men, divers possessing the highest vitality. Several divers collapse every season through toiling at unusual depths, and two or three pay the penalty of death. Most divers, however, live to as full a span as men pursuing other humble callings.

When a fishery is at its height, the scene on the banks is one of extreme animation, and a picture full of strangeness to New World eyes. Each craft is a floating hive of competitive noise and activity, and the center of a cordon of disappearing and reappearing seal-like heads, with baskets splashing in the water or being hauled by excited hands. In the distance floats the majestic barque Rengasamy Puravey, an old-timer, with stately spars, a quarter-deck, and painted port-holes that might cause a landsman to believe her a war-ship. For half the year the barque is the home of the government's marine biologist, and his office and laboratory, wherein scientific investigation and experimentation are in constant progress, are in houses built on the quarter-deck. Small steamers, having an official cut, move here and there among the fishing boats, doing patrol duty and carrying instructions when necessary from the Rengasamy Puravey.

"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.