He shook his fist at the fish, which, of course, darted away.

Joe's comical little caper begot a laugh, and he made a mental note to
work in that feature at all the performances. The value of a laugh is
appreciated even in a circus act.

As Joe went through the tricks, pretending to swallow an egg and making
it come out of his ear, causing several small objects to disappear, and
doing other tricks that he had learned while on the road with Professor
Rosello, Joe thought of something else.

"I wonder how that would work," he mused, for he could think, if not
talk, under water while holding his breath. As a matter of fact active
thinking did not make the time seem so long as when his attention was
fixed on the number of minutes he was trying to stay under.

"I must see if I can't work out something like that," Joe continued to
muse. "It ought to go well. I'd have to have some apparatus made for
it, though. Well, one thing at a time. I'll stick to the fish stunt
for a while yet."

Joe's head was beginning to throb now, caused by the continued water
pressure and by the retention of his breath. He felt that he would
soon have to go up to breathe.

"But I'll try to beat my own record, though it isn't much to boast of
as yet," he decided.

He finished his tricks, and then, stretching and yawning, which always
called forth a laugh, he straightened out on the white sand and
pretended to go to sleep while the goldfish swam above him.

It made a pretty and effective scene, and the audience applauded well.

Joe was nearly at his limit of endurance, though he was not in such
physical distress as he had been when first doing the act. He decided
that he must come up, so, pretending to awaken, and to be extremely
surprised at finding himself in a tank of water, with fish for
companions, Joe slowly floated to the surface.

"Three minutes and twenty seconds!" announced Jim Tracy, who stood with
his watch in his hand. "As I told you, friends, the boy fish has
remained under water, not three minutes and a quarter, as I predicted
he would, but five seconds longer. And let me tell you, my friends,
five seconds is a long time--under water."

The crowd applauded again as Joe came out of the tank and bowed while
he wrapped a bath robe about him to hurry to his dressing tent.

"Oh, Joe! It was fine!" cried Helen, as he passed her when she was
getting ready to go into the ring with Rosebud. "It was so pretty! How
did you ever think