ded on it. So
Captain Conkling, who was in charge of the job, induced one of his
divers to go down, and reluctantly the man put on his suit, but insisted
on having an extra rope, and a very strong one, tied around his waist.

"What's that for?" asked Conkling.

"That's to help get my body out, if the life-line breaks," said the
diver.

"Go on and do your work," replied Conkling, who had little use for
sentiment.

It happened exactly as the diver feared. He was drawn into the suction
of the hole, and when they tried to pull him up both hose and life-line
parted, and the man was drowned, but they managed to rescue his body
with the heavy line, just as he had planned.

Then Conkling called for another diver, but not a man responded. They
said they weren't that kind of fools.

"All right," said the captain, in his businesslike way; "then I'll go
down myself and stop that hole." And he called the men to dress him.

At this time Captain Conkling was seventy-five years old, and had
retired long since from active diving. But he was as strong as a horse
still, and no man had ever questioned his courage.

In vain they tried to dissuade him. "I'll stop that hole," said he, "and
I don't want any extra rope, either."

He kept his word. He went down, and he stopped the hole, but it was with
his dead body, and to-day somewhere in the Holyoke Dam lie the bones of
brave old Captain Conkling, incased in full diving-dress, helmet and
hose and life-line, buried in that mass of masonry. No man ever dared go
down after his body.

IV

WHEREIN WE MEET SHARKS, ALLIGATORS, AND A VERY TOUGH PROBLEM IN WRECKING

TIMMANS, whom I used to call the student diver, because of his keen
observation and capacity for wonder, leaned against the step-ladder that
reached down from hatch to cabin on the _Dunderberg_, and remarked,
while the others listened: "I did a queer job of diving once down into
the hold of a steamship, a National liner, that lay in her dock, blazing
with electric lights, and dry as a bone. Just the same, I needed my suit
when I got down into her--in fact, I wouldn't have lasted there very
long without air from the pump."

"Some queer cargo?" suggested Atkinson.

"That's it. She was loaded with caustic soda, or whatever they make
bleaching-powder of--barrels and barrels of it, with the heads broke in
after a storm, and it wasn't good stuff to breathe, I can tell you.
First they set men shoveling it out, with spong