Madge Morton's Victory

by Amy D. V. Chalmers

For the first and only time since their descent to the bottom of the bay Captain Jules had temporarily neglected Madge. He certainly had not expected to find any pearls in so unlikely a place as Delaware Bay; yet the shells he held in his hand were most unusual. The thrill of his old occupation seized hold of the pearl fisher. His big hands fairly trembled with emotion. He felt, rather than saw, Madge jerk her life line twice, but it never dawned on him that her signal for more air might fail to be answered.

Madge signaled again. A loud buzzing seemed to sound in her ears. Her tongue felt thick and swollen. She could not see a foot ahead of her. All the dazzling, shimmering beauty of the world under the water had passed into blackness. The little captain’s eyes were glazing behind the glass windows of her helmet. She felt that she must be dying. But she had strength to give one more signal. Air! air! How could she ever have believed that there was anything in the world so precious as fresh air? Madge had a vision of a field of new-mown hay in her old home at “Forest House.” The wind was blowing through it with a delicious fragrance. Had she the strength to pull her life line once again? The water that she loved so dearly was to claim her at last. She made a motion to go toward Captain Jules, but she had no control of her limbs.

Then Captain Jules became aroused to action. He realized that Madge had signaled for air, not once, but several times. This meant that her signal had not been answered. The captain had been for too many years a deep-sea diver not to guess instantly the girl’s condition. The groan inside his helmet came from the bottom of his heart. Captain Jules’s hands shook. He dropped the shells that he believed might contain priceless pearls down into the soft sand in the bed of the bay.

It was at this moment that Tom Curtis and Phyllis Alden, as well as the captain’s boat tenders, caught his confusing signals from below. More fresh air was pumped down the tube to Captain Jules, but not to Madge.

Phil’s leap and quick work at Madge’s air-pump must have taken place not more than three minutes afterward, but they were horrible, agonizing moments. Madge hardly knew how they passed. Captain Jules suffered the regret of a lifetime. How could he have been so unwise as to entrust the safety of this girl, whose life was so dear to him, to the perils of a diver’s experiences? In the few weeks of their acquaintance Madge Morton had become all in all to Captain Jules Fontaine.

There was but one thing for Captain Jules to do for his companion. He must signal to have her drawn up to the surface of the water again, trusting that she would not suffocate for lack of air in her ascent.

Madge was near enough to lay her hand on Captain Jules’s arm. Phil’s relief had come just in time. The life-giving fresh air from the world above pressed into her copper helmet. It filled her nose and mouth, it poured into her aching lungs. She received new life, new energy. Now she was no longer afraid. She did not wish to go above the surface of the water. Surely all above was now well. She yearned to continue her adventures on the under side of the world.

She it was, not Captain Jules, who dropped down on her hands and knees to grope for the captain’s lost pearl shells.

But the sand had covered them up forever, or else the water had carried them away!

Captain Jules wished to take Madge out of the water immediately, yet he yielded for a minute to her disappointment. What treasures had they lost when he threw the mother-of-pearl shells away? Neither of them would ever know. The old diver looked about in the soft mud, while Madge raked furiously near the spot where she thought the sailor had dropped the shells. Captain Jules walked on for a little distance. He had seen beyond them a tangled mass of other shells and seaweed and it occurred to him that the water might have carried his shells into some hidden crevice nearby.