can
keep it in when they're givin' him enough."

"An' what does he do," asked Rooney, with an anxious expression, "whin
they give him too little?"

"He pulls on the air-pipe,--as I'll explain to you in good time--the
proper signal for `more air.'"

"But what if he forgits, or misremimbers the signal?" asked the
inquisitive recruit.

"Why then," replied Baldwin, "he suffocates, and we pull him up dead,
an' give him decent burial. Keep yourself easy, my lad, an' you'll know
all about it in good time. I'll soon give 'ee the chance to suffocate
or bu'st yourself accordin' to taste."

"Come, cut it short and look alive," said Maxwell gruffly, as he stood
up to permit of a stout rope being fastened to his waist.

"You shut up!" retorted Baldwin.

Having exchanged these little civilities the two divers moved to the
side of the barge--Maxwell with a slow ponderous tread.

A short iron ladder dipped from the gunwale of the barge a few feet down
into the sea. The diver stepped upon this, turning with his face
inwards, descended knee-deep into the water, and then stopped. Baldwin
handed him the blasting-charge. At the same moment one of the
supernumeraries advanced with the front-glass or bull's-eye in his hand,
and the men at the pumps gave a turn or two to see that all was working
well.

"All right?" demanded the supernumerary.

"Right," responded Maxwell, in a voice which issued sepulchrally from
the iron globe.

There are three round windows fitted with thick plate-glass in the
helmets to which we refer. The front one is made to screw off and on,
and the fixing of this is always the last operation in completing a
diver's toilet.

"Pump away," said the man, holding the round glass in front of Maxwell's
nose, and looking over his shoulder to see that the order was obeyed.
The glass was screwed on, and the man finished off by gravely patting
Maxwell in an affectionate manner on the head.

"Why does he pat him so?" asked Edgar, with a laugh at the apparent
tenderness of the act.

"It's a tinder farewell, I suppose," murmured Rooney, "in case he niver
comes up again."

"It is to let him know that he may now descend in safety," answered
Baldwin. "The pump there is kep' goin' from a few moments before the
front-glass is screwed on till the diver shows his head above water
again--which he'll do in quarter of an hour or so, for it don't take
long to lay a charge; but our ordinary spell under water, when work