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 me