Dirty Jobs: Dangerous & Strange Jobs 100 Years Ago (Illustrated). Cleveland Moffett

exhilaration from my air-supply than any inconvenience. At every breath the whole suit heaves and settles with the lift and fall of my lungs. I carry my armor easily. It seems as if I have no weight at all, yet the scales would give me close to four hundred pounds.

      THE AUTHOR AFTER HIS FIRST DIVE. THE FACE-PLATE HAS BEEN UNSCREWED FROM THE HELMET.

      The fact is, though I did not know it, my friends up in the daylight were pumping me down too much air (this in their eager desire to give enough), and I was in danger of becoming more buoyant than is good for a diver; in fact, if the clay-pipe gentleman had turned his wheel just a shade faster I should have traveled up in a rush—four hundred pounds and all. I learned afterward that Atkinson had an experience like this, one day, when a green tender mixed the signals and kept sending down more air every time he got a jerk for less. Atkinson was under a vessel's keel, patching a hole, and he hung on there as long as he could, saying things to himself, while the suit swelled and swelled. Then he let go, and came to the surface so fast that he shot three feet out of the water, and startled the poor tender into dropping his line and taking to his heels.

      Needless to say, that sort of thing is quite the reverse of amusing to a diver, who must be raised and lowered slowly (say at the speed of a lazy freight elevator) to escape bad head-pains from changing air-pressure.

      I sat down on the deck and took note of things. The golden color of the water was due to the sunshine through it and the mud in it—a fine effect from a mean cause. For two or three feet I could see distinctly enough. I noticed how red my hands were from the squeeze of rubber wrist-bands. I felt the diving-suit over, and found the legs pressed hard against my body with the weight of water. I searched for the hammer and nail they had tied to me, and proceeded to drive the latter into the deck. I knew that divers use tools under water—the hammer, the saw, the crowbar, etc.—almost entirely by sense of feeling, and I wanted to see if I could do so. The thing proved easier than I had expected. I hit the nail on the head nearly every time. Nor did the water resistance matter much; my nail went home, and I was duly pleased. I breathed quicker, after this slight exertion, and recalled Atkinson's words about the great fatigue of work under water.

      I stood up again and shuffled to the edge of the wreck. Strange to think that if I stepped off I should fall to the bottom (unless the life-line held me) just as surely as a man might fall to the ground from a housetop. I would not rise as a swimmer does. And then I felt the diver's utter helplessness: he cannot lift himself; he cannot speak; he cannot save himself, except as those lines save him. Let them part, let one of them choke, and he dies instantly.

      And now the steady braying of the air-pump beat sounded like cries of distress, and the noise in my ears grew like the roar of a train. All divers below hear this roaring, and it keeps them from any talking one with another: when two are down together, they communicate by taps and jerks, as they do with the tenders above. I bent my head back, and could see a stream of bubbles, large ones, rising, rising from the escape-valve like a ladder of glistening pearls. And clinging to my little windows were myriad tiny bubbles that rose slowly. The old Hackensack was boiling all about me, and I saw how there may well be reason in the belief of some that this ceaseless ebullition from the helmet (often accompanied by a phosphorescent light in the bubbles) is the diver's safeguard against creatures of the deep.

      Well, I had had my experience, and all had gone well—a delightful experience, a thing distinctly worth the doing. It was time to feel for the life-line and give the three slow pulls. Where was the ladder now? I was a little uncertain, and understood how easily a diver (even old-timers have this trouble) may lose his bearings. There! one, two, three. And the answer comes straightway down the line—one, two, three. That means I must stand ready; they are about to lift me. Now the rope tightens under my arms, and easily, slowly, I rise, rise, and the golden water pales to silver, the bubbles boil faster, and I come to the surface by the ladder's side and grope again for its rungs. How heavy I have suddenly become without the river to buoy me! This climbing the ladder is the hardest task of all; it is like carrying two men on one's back. Again I bend over the deck, and see hands moving at my windows. A twist, a tug, and off comes the face-glass, with a suck of air. The test is over.

      "You done well," is the greeting I receive; and the divers welcome me almost as one of their craft. Henceforth I have friends among these quiet men whose business it is to look danger in the eye (and look they do without flinching) as they fare over river and sea, and under river and sea, in search of wrecks.