next second I felt my air stop, though I could
hear the pump beating. I jerked 'slack away' on the life-line, and that
loosed the hose and saved me, but I got a blast of compressed air as the
jam eased that jumped me up a yard."

"Suppose your life-line had been jammed, too," I asked, "so that you
couldn't jerk 'slack away'?"

Atkinson paused to think. "There's a difference of opinion about how
long a man can live on the air that's in his helmet. Some say three or
four minutes. I don't believe it. I think two minutes would do the
business."

"There was George Seaman--" began Timmans.

"Yes," said Atkinson, taking up the story, as was a senior's right,
"there was George Seaman, who put trust in the argument of Tom Scott and
Low and some of those old-timers, that a man can cut his hose and press
his thumb quick against the hole and live long enough on what air's in
the helmet to reach the top. Years ago they used to give that talk to us
youngsters, but I notice none of 'em ever tried it. Well, Seaman, he
_did_ try it; he was down on a wreck somewhere along Sixtieth Street,
and his hose got caught in the timbers. The life-line was all right, and
he was getting air enough, only when they tried to haul him up he stuck
on account of the hose. They tried three times to lift him, and each
time he'd come up a few feet and stick, and then they'd have to let him
fall back. You can see that's awful discouraging for a man, especially
when he's tired and cold. If Seaman had kept his nerve and waited they'd
prob'bly have sent another diver down to get him untangled, but he
didn't keep his nerve. All he saw was that the hose was caught and he
couldn't free it, and they couldn't get him up. It's a lot easier to get
rattled at the bottom of a river than up in the air, and Seaman called
to mind what he'd heard about stopping the hole with your thumb, and he
got out his knife. All divers carry a knife fast to the suit. See, like
this." He drew a two-edged knife, a wicked-looking weapon, out of its
leathern sheath, and moved his thumb along the edge.

"Then Seaman he felt for the hose, and made ready to cut. His idea was,
you see, to slash the hose at one stroke, then jerk on the life-line to
be hauled up quick, and keep the hole shut with his thumb while he came
up. I can picture him now with his knife on the hose, sort of praying a
minute, like a man might with a knife at his throat. That's what it
amounted to. Well, he wrote the sto