f
the bottom. Then out I dashed like knocking my head through a mirror.
Directly I got my eyes out of the water, I saw I'd come up a kind of
beach near the forest. I had a look round, but the natives and the brig
were both hidden by a big, hummucky heap of twisted lava, the born fool
in me suggested a run for the woods. I didn't take the helmet off, but
eased open one of the windows, and, after a bit of a pant, went on out
of the water. You'd hardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted.

"Of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and your head
in a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five minutes
under water, you don't break any records running. I ran like a ploughboy
going to work. And half way to the trees I saw a dozen niggers or more,
coming out in a gaping, astonished sort of way to meet me.

"I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of London.
I had about as much chance of cutting back to the water as a turned
turtle. I just screwed up my window again to leave my hands free, and
waited for them. There wasn't anything else for me to do.

"But they didn't come on very much. I began to suspect why. 'Jimmy
Goggles,' I says, 'it's your beauty does it.' I was inclined to be
a little light-headed, I think, with all these dangers about and the
change in the pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?'
I said, as if the savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me for? I'm
hanged if I don't give you something to stare at,' I said, and with that
I screwed up the escape valve and turned on the compressed air from the
belt, until I was swelled out like a blown frog. Regular imposing it
must have been. I'm blessed if they'd come on a step; and presently one
and then another went down on their hands and knees. They didn't know
what to make of me, and they was doing the extra polite, which was very
wise and reasonable of them. I had half a mind to edge back seaward and
cut and run, but it seemed too hopeless. A step back and they'd have
been after me. And out of sheer desperation I began to march towards
them up the beach, with slow, heavy steps, and waving my blown-out arms
about, in a dignified manner. And inside of me I was singing as small as
a tomtit.

"But there's nothing like a striking appearance to help a man over a
difficulty,--I've found that before and since. People like ourselves,
who're up to diving-dresses by the time we're seven, can scarcely
imagin