like an
egg-shell.

Finally, when she was ready they made fast a sixteen-inch hawser, and
put on full steam to pull her off into deep water. Off she came, and all
was going well with the towing when a fierce tropical storm came upon
them, and the steamer turned broadside to its fury, and the great
hawser snapped like a kite-string, and back she went on a coral-reef.

Once more they began at the beginning, and in time had another hawser
ready, and tried again. This time the hawser parted by grinding on the
beach as they dragged her.

Then, after long delay, they got a sixteen-inch hawser, wound with wire,
that would resist the friction of rocks and sand, and all would have
happened as they hoped had not a sawfish, sent by the evil power that
thwarted them, thrust its jagged weapon through the hawser strands,
piercing the wire and severing the big tow-line. The wrecking company
still shows the saw of that mischievous fish among its curiosities.

So Timmans's narrative ran on endlessly, with details of how they
stopped some fresh leaks with sixty-five barrels of cement, and how they
quelled a mutiny and how they finally got the steamer off, and rigged up
a patent rudder that steered her over twenty-five hundred miles, until
they landed her home, two hundred and fifty-odd days after the
expedition started. All going to show the kind of stuff American
wreckers are made of.

V

IN WHICH THE AUTHOR PUTS ON A DIVING-SUIT AND GOES DOWN TO A WRECK

ONE day I asked Atkinson, as master diver of the wrecking company, if he
would let me go down in his diving-suit; and he said yes very promptly,
with an odd little smile, and immediately began telling of people who,
on various occasions, had teased to go down, and then had backed out at
the critical moment, sometimes at the very last, just as the face-glass
was being screwed on. It was a bit disconcerting to me, for Atkinson
seemed to imply that I, of course, would be different from such people,
and go down like a veteran, whereas I was as yet only _thinking_ of
going down!

"There's a wreck on the Hackensack," said he; "it's a coal-barge sunk in
twenty feet of water. We'll be pumping her out to-morrow. Come down
about noon, and I'll put the suit on you."

Then he told me how to find the place, and spoke as if the thing were
settled.

I thought it over that evening, and decided not to go down. It was not
worth while to take such a risk; it was a foolish idea. Then