University lecturer, spent every day [an holiday sketching under the shark-infested Red Sea. He wore only bathing trunks, shoes with rope soles, a diving helmet, and used a celluloid drawing-board and a pencil.
I could only stay down 20 minutes at a time, Mr. Gibbings told the "Sunday Dispatch" on his return recently. Then I had to go up to get werm—the water was so cold, "The celluloid was sand-papered down to be suitable for drawing on, and the pencil was lead inside rubber tubing. To keep me down I had to. have 150b. of iron chains round my waist as a belt, It was certainly eerie work, but an experience I wouldn't have missed. The coral in unbelievingly fantastic shades and every colour of the rainbow, was what I set out to sketch for a book I am writing and illustrate ing, but I ended up by drawing also the vividly-coloured little tropical fish which kept nibbling at my bare legs.
There is an absolutely unknown world waiting to be explored under the sea—some of the coral stands 12 feet high, like vast flowering shrubs. The whole effect is dazzling.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.