“‘Now recollect,’ said my husband, ‘if you want to come up quick in case anything happens, give one jerk on the life-line. If you want more air give two jerks, or less air three jerks.’
“I expected to shoot to the bottom like a lump of lead, owing to all the weight I had on me, but I sank gradually instead, so buoyant was the inflated armor. I was on the bottom with five fathoms of water over my head almost before I realized it.
“I felt a sensation of pressure on the chest, and in my ears and head, which was quite painful. The first thing that I noticed, was a boiling of the water about me for which I was unable to account, until I happened to think of the foul air escaping through the valve in the back of the helmet.
CAPTAIN AND MRS. SORCHO.
“I found, also, to my surprise, that I could see quite well some distance about me, and observed a number of little fishes, which finally swam quite close to me and appeared to gaze in the glass front of the helmet with their little bead-like eyes, as though wondering what sort of a fish I was. I felt strangely light and buoyant, and found that with the slightest upward movement I would shoot surfaceward several feet. The armor also felt so stiff and hard that I could scarcely move in it.
“The next time I went down was not on a pleasure trip, but to work, and for several weeks my husband and I took turns diving for shells and curios. We finally completed our contract.
“Recovering a dead body is the task a diver dislikes more than any other kind, and although I have recovered quite a number, the work is yet horrible to me.
“The first dead body I ever brought to the surface was that of a man who was supposed to have been murdered and thrown into a lake near Atlanta, Ga. I searched the entire bottom of the lake, and finally in a deep hole found the body.