man and Nature were pitted against each other in the uncongenial
gloom--life the stake.

He groped about his prison, glutinous with infusoriae and the oily
consistence of the sea. Here a nail, there a block or lever, shaped
out mentally by the touch, theorized, studied upon and thrown down.
Now a hatchet, monkey-wrench, monkey's-tail, or gliding fish or
wriggling eel, companions of his imprisonment. At last the cold
touch of iron: the hand encloses and lifts it; its weight betrays its
length; he feels it to the end--blunt, square, useless. He tries the
other end--an edge or spike. That will do. Standing under the hatch,
guided by the ladder to the position, and with a strong swinging,
upward blow, the new tool is driven into the soft, fibrous and
adhesive pine bottom of the box. On the principle on which your
butler's practiced elbow draws the twisted screw sunk into the
cobwebbed seal of your '48 port, he uncorks himself. The box pulled
out of the hatch, the sea-gods threw up the sponge, that zoophyte
being handy.

These few incidents, strung together at random, and embracing only
limited experiences out of many in one enterprise, are illustrative,
in their variety and character, of this hardy pursuit, and the
fascination of danger which is the school of native hardihood.
But they give the reader a very imperfect idea of the nature and
appearance of the new element into which man has pushed his industry.
The havoc and spoil, the continued danger and contention, darken the
gloom of the submarine world as a flash of lightning leaves blacker
the shadow of the night and storm.

The first invention to promote subaqueous search was the diving-bell,
a clumsy vessel which isolates the diver. It is embarrassing, if not
dangerous, where there is a strong current or if it rests upon a slant
deck. It limits the vision, and in one instance it is supposed the
wretched diver was taken from the bell by a shark. It permits an
assistant, however, and a bold diver will plunge from the deck above
and ascend in the vessel, to the invariable surprise of his companion.
An example of one of its perils, settling in the mud, occurred, I
think, in the port of New York. A party of amateurs, supported by
champagne flasks and a reporter, went down. The bell settled and stuck
like a boy's sucker. One of the party proposed shaking or rocking the
bell, and doing so, the water was forced under and the bell lifted
from the ooze.

But a descent in