rg_, then busy raising a coal-barge sunk off
Fourteenth Street in the East River.

Atkinson was down doing carpenter-work on holes stove in her, and I
stood on deck beside the man "tending" him, and watched the bubbles boil
up from the diver's breathing, and the signals on a rubber hose and a
rope. It was less air or more air, by jerks on the hose. It was rags for
a leak, or a heavier hammer, or a piece of batten so-and-so long, with
nails ready driven at the corners--all were indicated by pulls on the
life-line or the startling appearance of hands or fingers (Atkinson's),
that would now and then reach above water and move impatiently. The
wreck was only five or six feet under, and the diver's helmet showed
like the back of a big turtle whenever he stood up straight on the
sunken deck.

Suddenly there is a scurry of barefoot youths along the pier timbers.
The diver is coming up. Now he lifts himself slowly under the crushing
weight, one short step at a time up the ladder. No man at all is this,
but a dripping three-eyed monster of rubber and brass, infinitely
fascinating to wharf loungers. The "tender" twists off the face-glass,
and Atkinson says something with a snap in it, and explains what he is
trying to do at the forward hatch. Then he leans over the rail on his
stomach and rests. Then he goes down again.

"He's the best-natured man I know, Bill is," remarked Captain Taylor,
commander of the _Dunderberg_; "but all men get irritable under water.
Why, I've had men who wouldn't swear for the world up in the air tell
me they rip out cuss words something terrible down on the bottom. Just
seems like they can't help it."

I noticed that the tender did not join in our talk, but stood with hands
on his lines and eyes on the water, absorbed in his responsibility; he
looked like an angler about to land a big fish. Neither did the men at
the air-pump talk. This feeding breath to a diver is serious business.

"How long would he live, do you think," I asked, "if the pump should
stop?"

"Mebbe a minute, mebbe two," said Captain Taylor. "I knew a Norwegian
who was down in fifty feet of water when the hose busted. It busted on
deck, where the tender heard it, and he started to lift, right away. It
couldn't have been over a minute before they had him up, but he was so
near dead the doctors worked three hours on him before he came around.
That'll give you an idea of how far gone he was."

The captain told of other desperate c