Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters Part 4

According to rule they should instantly have hauled the diver up, but Baldwin bade them delay a moment.

"I'm quite sure there's nothing wrong," he said, stooping over the side of the barge, and gazing into the water, "it's only another touch of nervousness.--Ah! I see him, holdin' on like a barnacle to the ladder, afraid to let go. He'll soon tire of kickin' there--that's it: there he goes down the rope like the best of us."

In another moment the life-line and air-pipe ceased to run out, and then the a.s.sistant gave one pull on the line. Immediately there came back _one pull_--all right.

"_That's_ all right," repeated Baldwin; "now the ice is fairly broken, and we'll soon see how he's going to get on."

In order that we too may see that more comfortably, you and I, reader, will again go under water and watch him. We will also listen to him, for Rooney has a convenient habit of talking to himself, and neither water nor helmet can prevent _us_ from overhearing.

True to his instructions, the pupil proceeded to fasten his clew-line to the stone at the foot of the ladder-rope, and attempted to kneel.

"Well, well," he said, "did ye iver! What would me mother say if she heard I couldn't git on my knees whin I tried to?"

Rooney began this remark aloud, but the sound of his own voice was so horribly loud and unnaturally near that he finished off in a whisper, and continued his observations in that confidential tone.

"Och! Is it dancin' yer goin' to do, Rooney?--in the day-time too!" he whispered, as his feet slowly left the bottom. "Howld on, man!"

He made a futile effort to stoop and grasp the mud, then, bethinking himself of Baldwin's instructions, he remembered that too much air had a tendency to bring him to the surface, and that opening the front-valve was the remedy. He was not much too soon in recollecting this, for, besides rising, he was beginning to feel a singing in his head and a disagreeable pressure on the ears, caused by the ever-increasing density of the air. The moment the valve was fully opened, a rush out of air occurred which immediately sank him again, and he had now no difficulty in getting on his knees.

"There's little enough light down here, anyhow," he muttered, as he fumbled about the stone sinker in a vain attempt to fasten his line to it, "sure the windy must be dirty."

The thought reminded him of Baldwin's teaching. He bent forward his head and wiped the gla.s.s with his night-cap, but without much advantage, for the dimness was caused by the muddiness of the water.

Just then he began to experience uncomfortable sensations; he felt a tendency to gasp for air, and became very hot, while his garments clasped his limbs very tightly. He had, like Maxwell, forgotten to reclose the breast-valve, but, unlike the more experienced diver, he had failed to discover his omission. He became flurried and anxious, and getting, more and more confused, fumbled nervously at his helmet to ascertain that all was right there. In so doing he opened the little regulating c.o.c.k, which served to form an additional outlet to foul air.

This of course made matters worse. The pressure of air in the dress was barely sufficient to prevent the water from entering by the breast-valve and regulating c.o.c.k. Perspiration burst out on his forehead. He naturally raised his hand to wipe it away, but was prevented by the helmet.

Rooney possessed an active mind. His thoughts flew fast. This check induced the following ideas--

"What if I shud want to scratch me head or blow me nose? Or what if an earwig shud chance to have got inside this iron pot, and take a fancy to go into my ear?"

His right ear became itchy at the bare idea. He made a desperate blow at it, and skinned his knuckles, while a hitherto unconceived intensity of desire to scratch his head and blow his nose took violent possession of him.

Just then a dead cat, that had been flung into the harbour the night before, and had not been immersed long enough to rise to the surface, floated past with the tide, and its sightless eyeb.a.l.l.s and ghastly row of teeth glared and glistened on him, as it surged against his front-gla.s.s. A slight spirt of water came through the regulating c.o.c.k at the same instant, as if the dead cat had spit in his face.

"Hooroo! Haul up!" shouted Rooney, following the order with a yell that sounded like the concentrated voice of infuriated Ireland. At the same time he seized the life-line and air-tube, and tugged at both, not four times, but nigh forty times four, and never ceased to tug until he found himself gasping on the deck of the barge with his helmet off and his comrades laughing round him.

"It's not a bad beginning," said Baldwin, as he a.s.sisted his pupil to unrobe; "you'll make a good diver in course o' time."

Baldwin was right in this prophecy, for in a few months Rooney Machowl became one of the best and coolest divers on his staff.

We need not try the reader's patience with an account of Edgar's descent, which immediately followed that of the Irishman. Let it suffice to say that he too accomplished, with credit and with less demonstration, his first descent to the bottom of the sea.

CHAPTER THREE.

REFERS TO A SMALL TEA-PARTY, AND TOUCHES VERY MILDLY ON LOVE.

Miss Pritty was a good soul, but weak. She was Edgar Berrington's maiden aunt--of an uncertain age--on the mother's side. Her chief characteristic was delicacy--delicacy of health, delicacy of sentiment, delicacy of intellect--general delicacy, in fact, all over. She was slight too--slightly made, slightly educated, slightly pretty, and slightly cracked. But there were a few things in regard to which Miss Laura Pritty was strong. She was strong in her affections, strong in her reverence for all good things (including a few bad things which in her innocence she thought good), strong in her prejudices and impulses, and strong--remarkably strong--in parentheses. Her speech was eminently parenthetical, insomuch that the range of her ideas was wholly untrammelled by the proprieties of subject or language. Given a point to be aimed at in conversation, Miss Pritty _never_ aimed at it. She invariably began with it, and, parting finally from it at the outset, diverged to any or every other point in nature. Perplexity, as a matter of course, was the usual result both in speaker and hearer, but then that mattered little, for Miss Pritty was also strong in easy-going good-nature.

On the evening in which we introduce her, Miss Pritty was going to have her dear and intimate friend Aileen Hazlit to tea, and she laid out her little tea-table with as much care as an engineer might have taken in drawing a mathematical problem. The teapot was placed in the exact centre of the tray, with its spout and handle pointing so that a line drawn through them would have been parallel to the sides of her little "boudoir." The urn stood exactly behind it. The sugar-basin formed, on one side of the tray, a _pendant_ to the cream-jug on the other, and inasmuch as the cream-jug was small, a toast-rack was coupled with it to const.i.tute the necessary balance. So, too, with the cups: they were placed equidistant from the teapot, the sides of the tray, and each other, while a salver of cake on one side of the table was scrupulously balanced by a plate of buns on the other side.

"There she is--the _darling_!" exclaimed Miss Pritty, with a little skip and (excuse the word) a giggle as the bell rang.

"Miss Aileen Hazlit," announced Miss Pritty's small and only domestic, who flung wide open the door of the boudoir, as its owner was fond of styling it.

Whereupon there entered "an angel in blue, with a straw hat and ostrich feather."

We quote from the last, almost dying, speech of a hopeless youth in the town--a lawyer's clerk--whose heart was stamped over so completely with the word "Aileen" that it was unrecognisable, and practically useless for any purpose except beating--which it did, hard, at all times.

Aileen was beautiful beyond compare, because, in her case, extreme beauty of face and feature was coupled with rare beauty of expression, indicating fine qualities of mind. She was quiet in demeanour, grave in speech, serious and very earnest in thought, enthusiastic in action, unconscious and unselfish.

"Pooh! Perfection!" I hear some lady reader e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.e.

No, fair one, not quite that, but as near it as was compatible with humanity. Happily there are many such in the world--some with more and some with less of the external beauty--and man is blessed and the world upheld by them.

The chief bond that bound Aileen and Miss Pritty together was a text of Scripture, "Consider the poor." The latter had strong sympathy with the poor, being herself one of the number. The former, being rich in faith as well as in means, "considered" them. The two laid their heads together and concerted plans for the "raising of the ma.s.ses," which might have been food for study to _some_ statesmen. For instance, they fed the hungry and clothed the naked; they encouraged the well-disposed and reproved the evil; they "scattered seeds of kindness" wherever they went; they sowed the precious Word of G.o.d in all kinds of ground--good and bad; they comforted the sorrowing; they visited the sick and the prisoner; they refused to help, or, in any way to encourage, the idle; they handed the obstreperous and violent over to the police, with the hope--if not the recommendation--that the rod should not be spared; and in all cases they prayed for them. The results were considerable, but, not being ostentatiously trumpeted, were not always recognised or traced to their true cause.

"Come away, darling," exclaimed Miss Pritty, eagerly embracing and kissing her friend, who accepted, but did not return, the embrace, though she did the kiss. "I thought you were not coming at all, and I have not seen you for a whole week! What has kept you? There, put off your hat. I'm _so_ glad to see you, dear Aileen. Isn't it strange that I'm so fond of you? They say that people who are contrasts generally draw together--at least I've often heard Mrs Boxer, the wife of Captain Boxer, you know, of the navy, who used to swear so dreadfully before he was married, but, I am happy to say, has quite given it up now, which says a great deal for wedded life, though it's a state that I don't quite believe in myself, for if Adam had never married Eve he would not have been tempted to eat the forbidden fruit, and so there would have been no sin and no sorrow or poverty--no poor! Only think of that."

"So that our chief occupation would have been gone," said Aileen, with a slight twinkle of her l.u.s.trous blue eyes, "and perhaps you and I might never have met."

Miss Pritty replied to this something very much to the effect that she would have preferred the entrance of sin and all its consequences-- poverty included--into the world, rather than have missed making the friends.h.i.+p of Miss Hazlit. At least her words might have borne that interpretation--or any other!

"My father detained me," said Aileen, seating herself at the table, while her volatile friend put lumps of sugar into the cups, with a tender yet sprightly motion of the hand, as if she were doing the cups a special kindness--as indeed she was, when preparing one of them to touch the lips of Aileen.

"Naughty man, why did he detain you?" said Miss Pritty.

"Only to write one or two notes, his right hand being disabled at present by rheumatism."

"A gentleman, Miss, in the dinin'-room," said the small domestic, suddenly opening a c.h.i.n.k of the door for the admission of her somewhat dishevelled head. "He won't send his name up--says he wants to see you."

"How vexing!" exclaimed Miss Pritty, "but I'll go down. I'm determined that he shan't interrupt our _tete-a-tete_."

Miss Pritty uttered a little scream of surprise on entering the dining-room.

"Well, aunt," said Edgar Berrington, with a hearty smile, as he extended his hand, "you are surprised to see me?"

"Of course I am, dear Eddy," cried Miss Pritty, holding up her cheek for a kiss. "Sit down. Why, you were in London when I last heard of you."

"True, but I'm not in London now, as you see. I've been a week here."

"A week, Eddy! And you did not come to see me till now?"

"Well, I ought to apologise," replied the youth, with a slight look of confusion, "but--the fact is, I came down partly on business, and--and-- so you see I've been very busy."

"Of course," laughed Miss Pritty; "people who have business to do are usually very busy! Well, I forgive you, and am glad to see you--but--"