"Easy enough," says I, "to answer that. It's for you or me, sir, who are the responsible officers, to be divers too." This I said, for I had quickly caught his meaning. Then I went on, "As for myself, I will cheerfully go down."
"Have you ever dived?" asked he.
"No," I replied, "but I can soon learn myself to do so. Woods had never used this dress until a little while ere he came aboard the Furie; yet, now, see what he can do; and what he can, so can I. Therefore, unless you go I will."
He thought a little while--perhaps communing with himself as to whether 'twas not his duty to go--but at last he said,
"Well, that way is p'raps best. You shall go, but to-day--since it grows on apace--there shall be no new descent. To-night we will rest, and then begin the work to-morrow. That shall suffice."
So we did no more that day, only we signalled for the bark to come nearer to us and so anchored her a little closer to the Bajo, and then all who were in the tender went off and into her for the night, the spot by the reef being buoyed, though there was little enough need for that, since, now we knew where to look, we could easily see the shoal water.
One thing we desired to know, so sent for the black to tell us--namely, what he meant by saying that he saw a dead man looking at him from a hole.
"Oh! signor," he said, when he had come in to us, "oh, signor, I see him berry plain. He leanie right out of big porthole, his body half way out, his bony hands holding to the sides, his bony skull turned up to me."
"Nonsense," says Phips, "his hands and head would have fallen off long ago. You dreamed it, man!"
But the black asseverated that he had not dreamed it, and so we left it until to-morrow to see.