A Pearl Diver's Experience

'I was once a diver - not a wrecker, ut a pearl diver - and bard business t vd?," recently observed the captain f h Spanish bng to a reporter f the california Times. "We worked off the íexican and Panama, coasta, princial!y on the PaciOc side. Sometimes we worked alone, but gent-rally on liares, ana soruetimes for pay. We went to the grounds in small sailing essels; then we took to small boats nd covered as much grund as possile. Ertch man had a basket, a weight nd a knife. For sharks? Tes; but it s a noor defence. for it ia almost )03sible to swing the arm wiUi any orce under water. The best weapon is short spear. When you reach the round you strip, put yoar feet in a ig sinker, take the basket that has a ope for hoisting, drop over, and soon ind yourself at the bottom. Then your business is to kuock off as many oysters as you can, aad pile them into the basket bef ore you lose your wind. It 8 a terrible strain, but I could stand it in those days fer six minutes, and I have kcown some men who could stay down ten; but it is sure death in the loug run. If theground ia 'well stocked you can get twenty or more shells, but t is all luck. When the basket is full it is hauled np, and after yon come up for your wind down you go again, the sink being hauled up with a small cord for that purpose. It was on one of these that I ran afoul of the animal that gave me a lasting fright. You will smile when I say it was only a star-flsh, but that it really was. I went down sixty feet with a rush, and, landing on the edge of a big braach of coral, swung off into a kind of basin. The basket went ahead of me, and as I swung off to reach the botttom, somethiug seemed to spring up all áround me, and I was in the arms of tome kind of a monster tbat coiled about my body, arins and leg?. I tried to eeream, forgett ing that I was in the water, and lost my wind. It was j;ist as if the plant had sprouted under me and then tbroTfri ita vines and tendrils about me. There were thousands of them, coiliug and writhing, and I tbo'jght 1 had landed in a nest of sea snakes. I gave the signal as soon as I could, and made a break upward, part of the creature clinging to -me, while the rest, I could see, was dropping topieces. They hauled me into the boat when 1 cu vio nuiim:t', aun jauitu luu iljalll part of the animal from me. It waa ova, ábout three feet across, and the live arms seemed (o d'vide into thousands oí others. I probably landed on top of that one, -orhich at that time was the largest I had ever seen. I af terward aw the body of one that was washed ashore on the Isthmus that must bave hi'.d a spread of thirty-üve feet. Their power of grasping is considerable, but touch them in a certain way and they throw off their arms iu i regular shower, and are soon reduced to an oval body." Why are those things on your dress, called bugletrimmings?" Georgowanted to know. "Oh, Einily replied, lightly, "bccause pa blows so over tho bfll,"- Hawkeye, None are so fond of secrets as those that do not mean to keep them; they covet a secret as the spendthrif t covets laoney, merely that they may circuíate