"For," says he, "I will try this, sir, now, and see how far I can go down."
You may be sure all watched him with eagerness. For besides that we hoped he should find below what we sought, but a few of us had ever seen this dress before, and were almost afraid of what might come to him. Yet, he assured us, we need to have no fear; he had made many experiments and descents as trials at home in the sea and river Thames, and was confident of what he could do. So, as calmly as if he were going down the stairs of a house, he bade the sailors lower him over from the gangway, and descended by the lines he had arranged and was gone beneath the sea, and in a few moments there was nought but a few bubbles to mark the spot where he had been.
Presently we knew by a signal agreed upon with those who held the ropes, that he had reached the bed, and then by the paying out of his pipes that he was moving about. And so he stayed thus for some twelve minutes, when we also knew he was returning to below the ship, and then there came the next signal to haul him up again, which, being done, his great helmet with its fierce goggle eyes appeared above the water once more, he following.
Tied on to him he bore two things, one a great beam of wood in which was stuck pieces of jagged rock, which looked for all the world like the great teeth of some beast that had been fastened in't and then broken off--they were indeed bits of the reef--the other a great piece of limestone as big as my head, all crusted and stuck over with little disks or plates, which were, we found, rusty pieces of eight.
"A sign! A sign!" says Phips, taking them from him; "now get your breath, Woods, and tell us what you have found," and this the man did, puffing and blowing freely for a time ere he could speak.
Then he said, "Of the wreck, sir, I have seen nought, but surely I have found the track. All the bottom of the sea is scored as though some great thing had passed over it, and everywhere there lie great lumps of limestone such as this, and great beams such as that."
"Ha!" says Phips, and with that he takes the diver's axe and splits open the lump, and there, wedged in all over it, were many more rusty old pieces. "Ha! she has left a silver track as she passed along. Go on."
"So I do think, sir," says the diver, "and she cannot be afar off where I descended, unless she is all gone to pieces. And even then the bed of the sea must be full of all she had gotten inside her. But, sir, I think this is not so; I think she has been brought up short, for, close by, as I gather, is another reef."
"How far off? How far off?" suddenly called out the captain, full of strange excitement.
"Not two cables off, I think, sir," replies Woods, "since the bottom where I was begins to rise towards it, and therefore--"