you," said the expert, "what a diver has to contend with
at the bottom of a river. He often sinks four or five feet in the mud,
just as those bags sink, and sometimes the mud suction holds him down so
hard that three men pulling on the life-line can scarcely budge him. And
when the mud lets go the diver comes out of it like a cork from a
bottle. You can feel him flop over, clean tuckered out with kicking and
working his arms. They let him lie there a minute or two to rest, and
then pull him up. Why, vessels will sink ten or twelve feet in the mud,
so that the diver has to take a hose down, and wash a tunnel out below
the keel, to get a lifting-chain under."

"Wash a tunnel out?" I inquired.

"That's what they do. You know how you can bore a hole in a sand-bank,
don't you, with a stream of water? Well, it's just the same with a
mud-bank down below, only you need more pressure. Sometimes we use a
stream of compressed air. The diver steers the hose just as a fireman
steers the fire-hose, and once in a while gets knocked over by the force
of it, just as a fireman does."

Tunneling mud-banks under water, with streams of water or streams of
compressed air, struck me as decidedly a novelty. I was to hear of
stranger things ere long.

My guide presently pointed out a splendidly built young man who was
shoveling mud off the deck, not far from us.

"There," said he, "is a case that illustrates the worst of this
business. That fellow is made to be a diver; he's intelligent, he's not
afraid, and he can stand having the suit on; he's been down two or three
times and done easy jobs of patching. If he'd keep straight for a year
or two, he could earn his ten dollars a day with the best of them. But
he won't keep straight. The poor fellow drinks. We can't depend on him.
And here he is, shoveling mud for a dollar and a quarter a day, and no
steady work at that."

[Illustration: "THE DIVER'S HELMET SHOWED LIKE THE BACK OF A BIG
TURTLE."]

Ten dollars a day seemed a handsome wage, and I asked if divers
generally earn so much.

"Good ones do, and a diver's day is only four hours' long, or less when
they go to great depths. And they draw a salary besides, and often
receive handsome presents. You ought to see our chief diver, Bill
Atkinson; he lives in a brownstone house." He paused a moment, and then
added: "But I guess they earn all they get."

A few days later I made Mr. Atkinson's acquaintance on board the
steam-pump _Dunderbe