“Oh, yes, I see that,” declared Tom. “Is that the wreck?”
“I’ll say ’tis,” Rawlins assured him. “Well, we’re near enough. Too bad we can’t let the old sub down to the bottom, but it’s too rough. I guess she’ll be pretty steady here though—isn’t any current or those sea-rods would be waving.”
“But I don’t understand how you can go down with life-lines and things when the submarine is under water,” said Frank. “I thought we’d have to be on the surface.”
“And I don’t see why it makes any difference about the suits, no matter how deep it is,” added Tom.
“I don’t use life-lines and ‘things’ when I’m diving from a sub,” explained Rawlins. “In the first place they’re no use. When a fellow goes down from the surface he can’t be seen and so he has to have a signal line and a rope for hauling him up. But down here I can come back to the sub whenever I please and just climb into the air-lock on the ladder, and if I want to signal I can do it without any line—just wave my hands—as you can see me all the time. The airhose runs from a connection in the air-lock and I carry a light line along just as a safeguard and have a man in the air-lock holding it. Of course I could go down in one of the self-contained suits, but the pressure’s pretty big down here and it’s no fun working in one of them when the pressure outside is just about the limit of what I can get with the oxygen generators. It’s different with the air—I don’t have to bother with that—the pump looks after it.”
“Oh, I understand,” declared Frank, “but who’s going to tend the line for you?”
“Sam,” replied Rawlins. “He’s worked with me before and he’s a wonderful diver and swimmer. You see the pressure in the air-lock is the same or even a little more than outside and it takes a chap who’s used to deep-sea diving to stand that. Sam could go down here without a suit—but not for long of course—pressure’s too great. Well, so long. Keep your eyes on the wreck and you’ll see me out there among the fishes in a minute.”
Rawlins entered the air-lock with Sam and presently the boys saw him—a grotesque, clumsy figure in the baggy diving suit and big round helmet—laboriously making his way along the bottom almost below them. Turning, he waved his hand reassuringly and then resumed his way towards the coral-encrusted wreck.
“Doesn’t he look funny!” cried Tom, “leaning way forwards and half swimming along, and aren’t those bubbles coming up from his escape-valve pretty? Say, it must be fun to be way down there. Gosh, I wish we could have gone!”
“It takes years of practice to enable a man to stand that pressure,” his father informed him, “and even expert professional divers cannot keep it up long. If you boys should go down here you’d probably be terribly injured—your ear drums burst and perhaps your eyes ruptured. A diver begins in shoal water and gradually goes deeper and deeper and Rawlins has been at it since he was a youngster.”