“Don’t attempt it, Madge, if you are frightened,” urged Miss Jenny Ann, who was feeling dreadfully frightened herself. “I am sure Captain Jules will forgive you if you back out.”
Captain Jules looked at Madge searchingly. Her eyes smiled bravely into his, although her heart was going pit-a-pat.
“Miss Madge is not afraid,” answered Captain Jules curtly. “Robert Morton’s daughter has no right to know fear.”
Madge first slipped her feet into a pair of heavy leather boots. She gave a gay laugh as she slipped into her rubber cloth suit, which was made in one piece. “I feel just like a walrus,” she confided to Tom Curtis, who was watching her with set lips.
Then Madge and Captain Jules, who was in exactly the same costume, got into their boats and moved out a little distance from the shore.
Tom Curtis had asked Captain Jules’s consent to sit in one of the boats with Phil. At the last moment Philip Holt stepped calmly into the other. No one stopped to argue with him, or to thrust him out; the whole party was too much excited.
Not for all the pearls in all the seas would Captain Jules Fontaine have allowed one hair of Madge’s head to be injured. But he really did not believe that she would be in any danger under the water with him. He had arranged every detail of the diving perfectly. He would watch her every movement at the bottom of the bay. To tell the truth, Captain Jules was immensely proud of Madge’s and Phil’s bravery in desiring to accompany him.
The final moment for the dive arrived. Madge waved her hand to the crowd of her friends lining the shore. She flung back her head and looked gayly, triumphantly, up at the blue sky above her, with its sweep of white, sailing clouds. Below her the water looked even more deeply blue.
“Remember, Madge,” whispered Captain Jules calmly, “the one quality a diver needs more than anything else is presence of mind. Keep a clear head under the water and nothing shall harm you, I swear. But above all, don’t forget your signals.”
With his own hands Captain Jules fastened the brass corselet about Madge’s slender neck and set a big copper helmet which he screwed over her head to her corselet. Madge then surveyed the world only through the glass windows at each side of her head and in front. Her air-tube entered her helmet at the back. Two men in one of the boats were to keep the young girl diver supplied with oxygen by pumping fresh air down through this tube.