Around the World in 88 Years -E Book - Arthur Burt

we had been during those hours, except that we had been withJesus.Later, I said to the pastor’s wife, “Well, I suppose you are disappointedwith all this food untouched.”She said, “No, no. We’ll clear the table. We’ve had meat to eatthat we did not know of.”Four miles through shark-infested watersOnce, when I was in Jamaica attending a morning meeting, I metfour young men — quiet, meek, unassuming young men. To makeconversation, I asked them, “Have you come far to the meeting?”“Well,” one of them answered, “We’ve traveled four miles to gethere.”“Oh,” I said. I could tell by the looks of them that they didn’thave much money. They probably didn’t have a car. “Did youcome by bus?”“No,” the one explained. “We swam four miles across the bay.”I asked them what they did for a living and they told me theywere sponge divers.“That’s very interesting,” I said. “Tell me about your work.”“Well, we have to dive deeply. We must hold our breath forabout two minutes, cutting the sponges. We dive naked with arope around our middle and tie the sponges on the rope.This amazed me. “Is there no danger deep down in the water?”“Not really.”“Are there no sharks?” I asked.“Oh yes,” they said. “There are plenty of sharks.”“Well, don’t you consider that dangerous?”“Oh no,” they said. “If the sharks come around following ourrope, we just swim underneath them and take our knife and justrip them up.”213