PERILS OF A PEARL-DIVER.

Thames Star, Volume XIV, Issue 4594, 26 September 1883, Page 2

PERILS OF A PEARL-DIVER.

A pearl-diver had plunged into eleven fathoms, in the expectation of finding some peculiarly fine pearls.' He was pursuing his search, when, seeing the water suddenly darken, he looked up, and to his horror beheld at some distance above him, a huge shark, leisurely surveying all > his movements, and evidently intending to make a prize of him. The diver made a dart forward towards a rock, where he thought that he might elude the eye of the monste.', and then spring up to the surface ; but the shark shook his tail, and followed quietly, but with the same cvi' dent determination to eat him the moment he arose. As under the water time is everything, and the diver had only to" choose between being eaten alive and be* ing snffocated, the thought suddenly came into his mind to puzzle his pursuer by a contrivance in which, whether he remembered it or not, the cuttle fish has the merit of originality. . He threw himself upon the ground, and with his sticky. which all divers carry, began to muddy the water. A cloud of mire rose between him and the shark; he instantly struck out under cover of the cloud, and when he thought he had cleared his enemy, shot up to the surface. By great luck ha rose in the midst of the fishing boats. *'The people, accustomed to perils of this kind, saw that he must have been in danger, and commenced^plashing with thipir oars and sh juting, to drive the shark away; they succeeded so far as to save their companion, and the diver was taken on board, almost dying from the dreadful exertion of remaining so long under water