"All right," said the captain, in his businesslike way; "then I'll go down myself and stop that hole." And he called the men to dress him.
At this time Captain Conkling was seventy-five years old, and had retired long since from active diving. But he was as strong as a horse still, and no man had ever questioned his courage.
In vain they tried to dissuade him. "I'll stop that hole," said he, "and I don't want any extra rope, either."
He kept his word. He went down, and he stopped the hole, but it was with his dead body, and to-day somewhere in the Holyoke Dam lie the bones of brave old Captain Conkling, incased in full diving-dress, helmet and hose and life-line, buried in that mass of masonry. No man ever dared go down after his body.
IV
WHEREIN WE MEET SHARKS, ALLIGATORS, AND A VERY TOUGH PROBLEM IN WRECKING
TIMMANS, whom I used to call the student diver, because of his keen observation and capacity for wonder, leaned against the step-ladder that reached down from hatch to cabin on the Dunderberg, and remarked, while the others listened: "I did a queer job of diving once down into the hold of a steamship, a National liner, that lay in her dock, blazing with electric lights, and dry as a bone. Just the same, I needed my suit when I got down into her—in fact, I wouldn't have lasted there very long without air from the pump."
"Some queer cargo?" suggested Atkinson.