better to try the smooth water passage down there
than stay and be swallowed up by the ragin' waves on top.

"So I blew the can full of air and corked it, and then I tore up some
of the boards from the bottom of the boat so as to make a hole big
enough for me to get through,--and you sailormen needn't wriggle so
when I say that, for you all know a divin'-bell hasn't any bottom at
all and the water never comes in,--and so when I got the hole big
enough I took the oil-can under my arm, and was just about to slip down
through it when I saw an awful turtle a-walkin' through the sand at the
bottom. Now, I might trust sharks and swordfishes and sea-serpents to
be frightened and forget about their nat'ral enemies, but I never could
trust a gray turtle as big as a cart, with a black neck a yard long,
with yellow bags to its jaws, to forget anything or to remember
anything. I'd as lieve get into a bath-tub with a live crab as to go
down there. It wasn't of no use even so much as thinkin' of it, so I
gave up that plan and didn't once look through that hole again."

"And what did you do, madam?" asked Captain Bird, who was regarding her
with a face of stone.

"I used electricity," she said. "Now don't start as if you had a shock
of it. That's what I used. When I was younger than I was then, and
sometimes visited friends in the city, we often amused ourselves by
rubbing our feet on the carpet until we got ourselves so full of
electricity that we could put up our fingers and light the gas. So I
said to myself that if I could get full of electricity for the purpose
of lightin' the gas I could get full of it for other purposes, and so,
without losin' a moment, I set to work. I stood up on one of the
seats, which was dry, and I rubbed the bottoms of my shoes backward and
forward on it with such violence and swiftness that they pretty soon
got warm and I began fillin' with electricity, and when I was fully
charged with it from my toes to the top of my head, I just sprang into
the water and swam ashore. Of course I couldn't sink, bein' full of
electricity."

Captain Bird heaved a long sigh and rose to his feet, whereupon the
other mariners rose to their feet "Madam," said Captain Bird, "what's
to pay for the supper and--the rest of the entertainment?"

"The supper is twenty-five cents apiece," said the Widow Ducket, "and
everything else is free, gratis."

Whereupon each mariner put his hand into his trousers pocket, pulled