Now Atkinson himself lifts the copper helmet with its three goggle-eyes, and prepares to screw it on. The men watch your face sharply; they have seen novices weaken here.
"Want to leave any address?" says Captain Taylor, cheerfully.
I admit, in my own case, that at this moment I felt a very real emotion. I watched two lads at the air-pump wheels as if they were executioners, though both had kind faces, and one was sucking placidly at a clay pipe. I thought how good it was to stay in the sunshine, and not go down under a muddy river in a diving-suit.
"Wait a minute," I cried out, and went over the signals again—three slow jerks on the life-line to come up, and so on.
Now the helmet settles down over my head and jars against the collar. I see a man's hands through the round glasses crisscrossed over with protecting wires; he is screwing the helmet down tight. Now he holds the face-glass before my last little open window. "Go ahead wid de pump," calls a queer voice, and forthwith a sweetish, warmish breath enters the helmet, and I hear the wheeze and groan of the cylinders.
"If you get too much air, pull once on the hose," somebody calls; "if you don't get enough, pull twice." I wonder how I am to know whether I am getting too much or not enough, but there is no time to find out. I have just a moment for one deep breath from the outside, when there is no more "outside" for me; the face-glass has shut it off, and now grimy fingers are turning this glass in its threads, turning it hard, and hands are fussing with hose and life-line, making them fast to lugs on the helmet-face, one on each side, so that the hose drops away under my left arm, and the life-line under my right. Then I feel a sharp tap on my big copper crown, which means I must start down. That is the signal.
I pause a moment to see if I can breathe, and find I can. One step downward, and I feel a tug at my trousers as the air-feed plumps them out. Step by step I enter the water; foot by foot the river rises to my waist, to my shoulders—to my head. With a roar in my ears, and a flash of silver bubbles, I sink beneath the surface; I reach the ladder's end, loose my hold on it, and sink, sink through an amber-colored region, slowly, easily, and land safely (thanks to Atkinson's careful handling) on the barge's deck just outside her combings, and can reach one heavy foot over the depth of her hold, where tons of coal await rescue. A jerk comes on the life-line, and I answer that all is well; indeed, I am pleasantly disappointed, thus far, in my sensations. It is true there is a pressure in my ears, but nothing of consequence (no doubt deeper it would have been different), and I feel rather a sense of exhilaration from my air-supply than any inconvenience. At every breath the whole suit heaves and settles with the lift and fall of my lungs. I carry my armor easily. It seems as if I have no weight at all, yet the scales would give me close to four hundred pounds.
THE AUTHOR AFTER HIS FIRST DIVE. THE FACE-PLATE HAS BEEN UNSCREWED FROM THE HELMET.
The fact is, though I did not know it, my friends up in the daylight were pumping me down too much air (this in their eager desire to give enough), and I was in danger of becoming more buoyant than is good for a diver; in fact, if the clay-pipe gentleman had turned his wheel just a shade faster I should have traveled up in a rush—four hundred pounds and all. I learned afterward that Atkinson had an experience like this, one day, when a green tender mixed the signals and kept sending down more air every time he got a jerk for less. Atkinson was under a vessel's keel, patching a hole, and he hung on there as long as he could, saying things to himself, while the suit swelled and swelled. Then he let go, and came to the surface so fast that he shot three feet out of the water, and startled the poor tender into dropping his line and taking to his heels.