to be careful, too, of fouling his air hose. If
that breaks it would be death for him."

"How terrible!" exclaimed Helen. "Can nothing be done to save him?"

"They're trying everything they can think of, Miss," was the man's
answer. "The water company has sent for another diver to go down and
see what the trouble is, but it will be half a day before he can get
here, and by that time----"

He did not finish, but Joe and Helen knew what was meant.

The big crowd about the reservoir was excited, and yet it was a tense,
quiet sort of excitement. It was a grim waiting for what might, at any
moment, happen. Either the diver would be hauled up, or he would perish
deep down there under the calm water.

"How did it happen?" asked Joe. The man seemed to know considerable
about the accident.

"It was this way," he replied. "The reservoir is a new one, and it
hasn't worked just right since the water was let in. That is, the main
supply pipe, by which the water goes out to other and smaller pipes to
be distributed to the different municipalities, gets clogged up every
now and then.

"At first they thought it was because some refuse matter, left on the
ground when the reservoir was built, had gotten into the valves. But a
diver went down and found there was something the matter with the
valves themselves. They open and close the valves from the gate house
over there," and he indicated it, standing on the main dam wall of the
big reservoir.

"After the diver found what was wrong," the man went on, "the water
concern planned to have it fixed, and for some days now the work has
been going on. The diver would go down, his tools would be lowered to
him, and he has been working under water. You see they don't want to
let the water out of the reservoir because it would leave some towns
without a supply, which would be dangerous, if even for a day.

"So the diver has been working down there, and it's pretty deep, too,
about forty feet. There's a good deal of pressure at that depth, though
of course divers have gone deeper."

"Yes," assented Joe. "And how did the accident happen?"

"Nobody knows, exactly. Tom Rand, the diver, went down as usual this
morning, and his tools were let down to him. But he hadn't been down
long, as I understand it, before he signaled to be hauled up. He
signaled in a hurry, too, so something must have happened.

"The men at the air pump and the helpers tried to get him up, but they
couldn't. He was