Jack! I say, Jack! there's a row among the boatmen.”

A sturdy, thick-set young fellow of seventeen was Jack, with low-hung fists of formidable size, and a love for anything in the shape of a row that constantly led him into scrapes. Hot-headed though he was, he was one of the most good-humoured, well-meaning young fellows in the world, who, while he would not hurt a fly if he could help it, was always ready to fight in defence of his own or another's rights.

His chum, Roydon Leigh—“Don” for short—was of an altogether different type of young manhood. Jack's senior by a year, he was tall for his age, standing five feet ten in his stockings. His lithe, wiry frame contrasted strongly with Jack's sturdier build, as did his Scotch “canniness” with that young gentleman's headlong impetuosity.

“A row!” cried Jack delightedly, as he rushed to the taffrail. “Time, too; four weeks we've lain here, and never a hand in a single shindy!”

His companion laughed.

“As for that,” said he, “you're not likely to have a hand in this, unless you take the boat and row off to the diving grounds. All the same, there's a jolly row on—look yonder.”

The schooner Wellington rode at anchor at the northern extremity of the Strait of Manaar, on the famous pearl-fishing grounds of Ceylon. On her larboard bow lay the coast—a string of low, white sand-hills, dotted with the dark-brown thatch of fisher huts and the vivid green of cocoa-nut palms. The hour was eight o'clock in the morning of a cloudless March day; the fitful land-breeze had died away, leaving the whole surface of the sea like billowy glass. Half-a-dozen cable's-lengths distant on the schooner's starboard quarter, a score or-more of native dhonies or diving-boats rose and dipped to the regular motion of the long ground-swell.

It was towards these boats that Don pointed.

That something unusual had occurred was evident enough. Angry shouts floated across the placid water; and the native boatmen could be seen hurriedly pulling the boats together into a compact group about one central spot where the clamour was loudest.

“I say,” cried Jack, after watching the boats for some time in silence, “they're making for the schooner.”

“I don't half like the look of it,” replied Don uneasily; “they shouldn't leave the diving grounds, you know, until the signal gun's fired. I wish the guv was here.”

“Wishing's no good when he's ashore,” said Jack philosophically. “You're the skipper pro tem., and you must make the most of your promotion, old fellow. We'll have some fun, anyhow. Whew! how those niggers pull, and what a jolly row they're making!”

By this time the excited cries, which had first attracted the attention of those upon the schooner's deck, had been exchanged by the boatmen for a weird chant, to which every oar kept time. Erect in the stern of the foremost boat an old whiteheaded tyndal or “master” led the song, while at the end of each measure a hundred voices raised a chorus that seemed fairly to lift the boats clear of the water.

“What are they singing, anyway?” demanded Jack. “There's something about a diver and a shark in it, but I can't half make it out, can you?”

“We'll call Puggles—he'll be able to tell us. Pug! Hi, Pug! come here.”

“Coming, sa'b!” answered a voice from the cook's galley; and almost simultaneously there appeared on deck the plumpest, shiniest, most good-natured looking black boy that ever displayed two raws of pearly teeth. Nature had, apparently, pulled him into the world by the nose, and then, as a sort of finishing touch to the job, had given that organ a sharp upward tweak and left it so. It was to this feature that Puggles owed his name.

“Pug,” said his master, “tell us what those boatmen yonder are singing.”

The black boy cocked his ears and listened for a moment with parted lips. “Boat-wallahs this way telling, sa'b,” said he; and, catching the strain of the chant, he repeated the words of each line as it fell from the lips of the old tyndal:

“Salambo selling the diver one charm,

Salaam, Alii kum!

Old shark, he telling, then do no harm,

Salaam, Alii kum!

One spotted shark come out the south,

Salaam, Alii kum!

He taking diver's leg in his mouth,

Salaam, Alii kum!

Me big liking got, he telling, for you,

Salaam, Alii kum!

So he biting diver clean in two,

Salaam, Alii kum!

The lying charmer we take to the ship,

Salaam, Alii kum!

There he feeling bite of the sahib's whip,

Salaam, Alii kum!”

“Why, this Salambo must be the chap the guv had whipped off the grounds last season, eh, Pug?” cried Don excitedly.

“Same black rascal, sa'b. His skin getting well, he coming back. Dey bring him 'board ship, make his skin sore two times,” explained Puggles, grinning.

“Ha, ha!” laughed Jack. “We'll oblige 'em! We'll trice the fellow up! Hullo, here they come!”

The boats having now reached the schooner, the chant ceased abruptly, the heavy oars were noisily shipped, and, amid a perfect Babel of voices, the boatmen came swarming up the sides, until the deck was one mass of wildly gesticulating, dusky humanity. The uproar was terrific.

The old tyndal, who towered a full head and shoulders above his comrades, pushed his way to the front, and commanding silence among his followers, addressed himself to Don, who was always-recognised as master in his fathers absence.

“Sab.” said he in pigeon English, “one year back big sa'b ordering Salambo eat plenty blows for selling charm to diver-man. All same, this season he done come back and sell plenty charm, telling diver-man he put charm round neck, shark no eat him up. He telling plenty lie—this morning one shark done come, eat diver, charm, all!”

“Let him stand forward,” said Don, beginning to enter as much into the novelty of the thing as Jack himself.

The culprit, a sleek old fellow with shaven head, crafty eyes, and a rosary of wooden beads about his neck, was shoved to the front.

“Are you the chap who was whipped off the grounds last year for selling chaims?” demanded Don.

“Your honour speaking true words.” whined the shark-charmer, salaaming until his shaven head almost touched the deck; “I same rascal.”

“I say, Jack,” whispered Don, “I shan't have him whipped, you know. We'll, make him walk the plank.”

“Capital! Hell funk, certain, and there'll be no end of fun.”

“Well do it, then,” said Don decidedly. “Go forward and order two of the lascars to take the boat and lie under the schooner's quarter—-this side, you know—ready to pick him up.”

In high glee Jack departed to execute this commission, while Don again turned to the shark-doctor.

“Do you happen to have one of those charms about you?” he asked.

“One here got, sa'b,” said the fellow, producing from the folds of his waist-cloth an ola or fragment of palm-leaf, covered with cabalistic characters. “Sa'b no look at him?”

“Keep it yourself,” said Don; “you'll soon need it. Hi, lascar!” to one of the schooner's crew who stood near. “Fetch a plank here and run it out over the side.”

By the time the plank was brought and run out until one-half its length projected over the water, Jack came up chuckling, and by a sign intimated that the boat was in readiness. The crowd of natives, guessing that something unusual was afoot, craned their necks eagerly, while Puggles executed a comic pas seul in his delight. But the shark-charmer, as Jack had predicted, “funked” miserably.

Knowing that with the boat in waiting there was absolutely no danger to the shark-charmer's life, Don turned a deaf ear to his pleadings, and made a signal to the lascars to proceed.