Weaver was as good as his word; he had said that he would fix the butter, and he did. Sometime the next day, the butter, which had partially cooled during the night, having again melted, he set the keg in the edge of the water; and, not long after, we witnessed the novel and pleasing spectacle of what seemed a river of oil or honey. The water had risen, as it did regularly once in twenty-four hours, and the whole of our butter issuing out of the keg, had floated tranquilly down the stream.
The next morning, when Weaver was preparing to renew his culinary operations, I, by some manœuvre, called his attention to a man just performing his matin ablutions on the opposite side of the river, and cautiously suggested that it might be as well to follow his example. He received the hint, as if the idea had just dawned upon him for the first time; and, having bathed his hands and face, declared that, really, he didn't know before how much better a man felt after being washed; and he thought it would be a good plan to do it every morning, or at least as often as every Sunday.
I am sorry that I am unable to state whether this knight of the knife and the shell ever attained the summit of his modest ambition; but I am rather impressed with the belief that he never succeeded in throwing off his old habits, and may still be found at his former quarters in Devonshire street, busily and not ignobly employed in studying his favourite science of conchology.
On fastening our logs together by wooden bolts and ropes of bark, we found the raft thus constructed altogether inadequate to sustain the necessary weight consisting of four men, the armour weighing about one hundred pounds, and nearly double that quantity of shot; but by means of ropes attached to the outer corners, and made fast to the rocks, we made it sufficiently buoyant to answer for the first experiment; and our eager impatience would not admit of any longer delay.
As none of our company felt willing to play the part of diver, we hired for that purpose a man who had already been down in one of "the masheens" at home, and now gladly embraced the opportunity of making somewhat higher wages than he had been in the habit of receiving. It was not a little curious and amusing to watch the operations of his toilet while preparing for the descent,—seldom is the proudest belle while being drest for a ball waited upon by more zealous and obsequious attendants; he seemed indeed like some turtle fed alderman now disabled by gout or other infirmity, and dependent upon the services of others.
Our nabob divested of all but shirt and pantaloons, seated himself on a stone, while two of his ready servitors pulled on his boots and breeches all in one—a suit of genteel black very wide at the hips and having a copper ring round the waist. We next arrayed his highmightiness in a close jacket of the same fashion, with a second ring at the bottom, and at the top a monstrous copper basin somewhat larger than a water bucket, "within which his head seemed to have shrunk away like a dried filbert in its shell." He looked out through two glass eyes having that lidless stare peculiar to the sculpen, and there was a still larger window opposite his mouth, opening by a screw in order to give him air while dressing.
The jacket and trowsers were screwed firmly together by means of the two copper rings—the bags of shot and sand tied over his shoulders and round his waist—the viser closed, and the air-pumps at the same moment put in motion. A long hose of india rubber connected the pumps with the top of his helmet, and as the unwieldly figure rose to its feet, and waddled forward to the edge of the raft, while the inrushing air puffed out his flabby skin to its full extent, he looked like an infant elephant on its hind legs, or some of the monstrous idols of heathendom, among which, however, he would certainly have carried off the palm for ugliness. He was not like most other amphibious animals, awkward and clumsy on land, but all alert in the water; his awkwardness never deserted him, and the ridiculous splash, it could hardly be called a plunge, with which he settled into what seemed a more congenial element, reminded me of nothing so much as Ma'am Bridges sitting unexpectedly down in her own wash-tub.
After he had been gone some ten minutes, and no signal twitch had been given at the cord provided for that purpose, we began to look at each other with a mysterious sort of dread, and debate the expediency of pulling him up. My own position at the pumps prevented me from taking any more active part, but I did my best to induce my companions to haul him in without any further delay, and they at length yielded to my expostulations. But, to our infinite consternation, we now found all our strength unable to move him from the bottom; and crying out, all at once, to a party of miners on the opposite bank, two of them came in a canoe to our assistance, and by pulling directly over the spot where the diver lay, succeeded in bringing him to the surface.
We drew him hastily to the shore, and opening the visor saw, within the depths of the helmet, a countenance paler than that of Ivanhoe when he fainted in the very presence of the Queen of Love and Beauty, at the gentle and famous passage of arms at Ashby de la Zouche. Long after his armour had been removed, he still lay apparently lifeless,—and it was an hour before he could give us any account of his misfortune. He then told us that walking along the bottom he had suddenly stepped into a hole behind a rock, and was having the best time he ever had in his life, when all at once he fell asleep.
He was not in the least disturbed by the imminent danger he had escaped so narrowly, and declared his readiness to make a second trial, if a place could be found free from rocks, and where the water was sufficiently clear for us to see him from the surface.