“Probably not; at all events I should not have liked to have been in Neptune’s place.  I think the most peculiar plan of escaping from sharks is that pursued by the Cingalese divers, and often with success.”

“Tell me, if you please.”

“The divers who go down for the pearl oysters off Ceylon generally drop from a boat, and descend in ten or twelve fathoms of water before they come to the bed of pearl oysters, which is upon a bank of mud:  it often happens that when they are down, the sharks make for them, and I hardly need say that these poor fellows are constantly on the watch, looking in every direction while they are filling their baskets.  If they perceive a shark making for them, their only chance is to stir up the mud on the bank as fast as they can, which prevents the animal from distinguishing them, and under the cover of the clouded water they regain the surface; nevertheless, it does not always answer, and many are taken off every year.”

“A lady, proud of her pearl necklace, little thinks how many poor fellows may have been torn to pieces to obtain for her such an ornament.”

“Very true; and when we consider how many pearl-fisheries may have taken place, and how many divers may have been destroyed, before a string of fine pearls can be obtained, we might almost say that every pearl on the necklace has cost the life of a human creature.”

“How are the pearls disposed of, and who are the proprietors?”

“The government are the proprietors of the fishery, I believe; but whether they farm it out yearly, or not, I can not tell; but this I know, that as the pearl oysters are taken, they are landed unopened and packed upon the beach in squares of a certain dimension.  When the fishing is over for the season, these square lots of pearl oysters are put up to auction, and sold to the highest bidder, of course ’contents unknown;’ so that it becomes a species of lottery; the purchaser may not find a single pearl in his lot, or he may find two or three, which will realize twenty times the price which he has paid for his lot.”

“It is, then, a lottery from beginning to end; the poor divers’ lottery is shark or no shark; the purchasers’, pearls or no pearls.  But Mr. Fairburn is coming up the ladder, and I am anxious to know what was the fate of Mokanna.”

Mr. Fairburn, who had come on deck on purpose to continue the narrative, took his seat by his two fellow passengers and went on as follows:—­

“I stated that Mokanna had been forwarded to the Cape.  You must have perceived that his only crime was that of fighting for his native land against civilized invaders; but this was a deep crime in the eyes of the colonial government; he was immediately thrown into the common gaol, and finally was condemned to be imprisoned for life on Robben Island, a place appropriated for the detention of convicted felons and other malefactors, who there work in irons at the slate-quarries.”