t a
hundred yards off from where he was workin', an' so powerful was the
blast that it knocked him clean on his back. He got such a fright that
he signalled violently to haul up, an' they did haul 'im up, expectin'
to find one of his glasses broke, or his toobes bu'sted. There was
nothin' wotsomedever the matter with 'im, but he wouldn't go down again
that day. 'Owsever, he got over it, an' after that went down to work at
a wreck somewhere in the eastern seas--not far from Ceylon, I'm told.
When there 'e got another fright that well-nigh finished him, an' from
that day he gave up divin' an' tuck to gardening, for which he was much
better suited."

"What happened to him?" asked Edgar.

"I'm not rightly sure," answered Maxwell, refilling his pipe, "but I've
bin told he had to go down one day in shallow water among sea-weed. It
was a beautiful sort o' submarine garden, so to speak, an' long Tom
Skinclip was so fond o' flowers an' gardens nat'rally, that he forgot
hisself, an' went wanderin' about what he called the `submarine groves'
till they thought he must have gone mad. They could see him quite
plain, you see, from the boat, an' they watched him while he wandered
about. The sea-weed was up'ard of six feet high, tufted on the top with
a sort o' thing you might a'most fancy was flowers. The colours, too,
was bright. Among the branches o' this submarine forest, or grove,
small lobsters, an' shrimps, an' other sorts o' shell-fish, were doin'
dooty as birds--hoppin' from one branch to another, an' creepin' about
in all directions.

"After a time long Tom Skinclip he sat down on a rock an' wiped the
perspiration off his brow--at least he tried to do it, which set the men
in the boat all off in roars of laughter, for, d'ee see, Skinclip was an
absent sort of a feller, an' used to do strange things. No doubt when
he sat down on the rock he felt warm, an' bein' a narvish sort o' chap,
I make no question but he was a-sweatin' pretty hard, so, without
thinkin', he up with his arm, quite nat'ral like, an' drawed it across
where his brow would have bin if the helmet hadn't been on. It didn't
seem to strike him as absurd, however, for he putt both hands on 'is
knees, an' sat lookin' straight before 'im.

"He hadn't sat long in this way when they see'd a huge fish--about two
futt long--comin' slowly through the grove behind 'im. It was one o'
them creeters o' the deep as seems to have had its head born five or six
siz