ng habit) the sucking sound of water rushing through the holes.

One is sorry to learn that divers go to pieces early; few of them last
beyond fifty. As they grow old their keenness wanes; they lose their
bearings easily down below, and show bad judgment. And fear of the
business grows upon them. Often they seek false courage in strong drink,
which hurries on the end. Too many of them, after searching all their
lives for wrecks, wind up as wrecks themselves. But it is good to know
that there are exceptions--divers like Bill Atkinson, sturdy and true at
fifty, and good in the suit for years to come, unless their wives
persuade them to retire. The diver's wife, I am told--poor
woman!--starts with terror every time she hears a door-bell ring.

I must speak now of the burying-ground for wrecks, one of the strangest,
saddest, most interesting burying-grounds I can think of. It was a
disaster to the tug-boat _America_ that brought me there, this ill-fated
craft having been cut half through in the North River and sunk by a
great liner she was helping into dock. The _America_ went down forthwith
in sixty feet of water--sank so suddenly that all aboard her had to cast
themselves into the water and fight for it. The fireman and the cook,
not knowing how to swim, fought in vain, and ended their lives there. It
is astonishing how many men who follow the sea as a business cannot
swim. Well, in due course the wreckers came up to lift the tug-boat, and
Atkinson (who cannot swim either) directed the job. They swung chains
under her, fore and aft, they "jacked her up" nearly to the surface, and
then, while four pontoons held her, the _Pinafore_, the _Catamaran_,
and two others (only the working crews know the names of these
pontoons), they all splashed slowly up the river under tow of the
wrecking-tug _Fly_, and finally came to the burying-ground of wrecks.
Here they "jacked her up" some more (it was "We've got her!" "Slack away
now!" and "R'heh-eh-eh!" as the men strained at the blocks), and then
they grounded her on the mud, where wrecks have been grounded for years,
and left her, with all the others, to rust and ruin and rot.

[Illustration: THE MEN AT WORK WITH THE AIR-PUMP.]

But before they grounded her there was a long time to wait for high
tide--time for a good meal on the _Catamaran_, and a talk about hazards
of the sea as divers know them. It was then that Atkinson told me the
promised story of his deepest dive. I wish all m