“You forget, Joe,” replied Edgar, with a smile, “that although I have learnt how to dive, and have read a good deal about the history of diving, I am only an amateur after all, and cannot be supposed to know everything connected with the profession. All I know about Whitstable is that it is a port somewhere in the south of England.”
“Right, sir,” said Joe, “but it’s more than that; it lies on the coast of Kent, and is famous for its oyster-beds and its divers. How it came to be a place of resort for divers I don’t know, but so it is, an’ I have heard say it was divin’ for oysters in days of old that gave the natives a taste for the work. Anyhow, they’ve got the taste very decided somehow, an’ after every spell o’ dirty weather they’re sure to have telegrams from all parts of the coast, and you’ll see Lloyds’ agents huntin’ up the divers in the public-houses an’ packin’ ’em off wi’ their gear right and left by rail to look after salvage.
“These men,” continued Joe, “are most of ’em handicraftmen as well as divers, because you know, sir, it would be of no use to send down a mere labourer to repair the bottom of a ship, no matter how good he was at divin’; so, you’ll find among ’em masons, and shipbuilders, and carpenters, and engineers—”
“Ah!” interrupted Edgar, “I was just wondering how they would manage if it were found necessary to have the engines of a sunk steamer taken to pieces and sent up.”
“Well, sir,” rejoined Joe, “they’ve got men there who can dive, and who know as much about marine engines as you do yourself. And these men make lots of tin, for a good diver can earn a pound a day, an’ be kept in pretty regular employment in deep water. In shallow water he can earn from ten to fifteen shillings a day. Besides this, they make special arrangements for runnin’ extra risks. Then the savin’ they sometimes effect is amazin’. Why, sir, although you do know somethin’ of the advantages of diving, you can never know fully what good they do in the world at large. Just take the case of the Agamemnon at Sebastopol—”
“Och!” interrupted Rooney, whose visage was perplexed by reason of his pipe refusing to draw well, “wasn’t (puff) that a good job intirely (puff! There; you’re all right at last!) He was a friend o’ mine that managed that job. Tarry, we called him—though that wasn’t his right name. This is how it was. The fleet was blazin’ away at the fortifications, an’ of coorse the fortifications—out o’ politeness if nothin’ else—was blazin’ away at the fleet, and smoke was curlin’ up like a chimbley on fire, an’ big balls was goin’ about like pais in a rattle, an’ small shot like hail was blowin’ horizontal, an’ men was bein’ shot an’ cut to pieces, an’ them as warn’t was cheerin’ as if there was any glory in wholesale murther—bah! I wouldn’t give a day at Donnybrook wid a shillelah for all the sieges of Sebastopool as ever I heard tell of. Well, suddintly, bang goes a round shot slap through the hull of the Agamemnon, below the water-line! Here was a pretty to do! The ordinary coorse in this case would have bin to haul out of action, go right away to Malta, an’ have the ship docked and repaired there. But what does they do? Why, they gets from under fire for a bit, and sends down my friend Tarry to look at the hole. He goes down, looks at it, then comes up an’ looks at the Commodore,—bowld as brass.
“‘I can repair it,’ says Tarry.
“‘Well, do,’ says the Commodore.
“So down he goes an’ does it, an’ very soon after that the Agamemnon went into action again, and blazed away at the walls o’ the owld place harder than ever.”
“That was a good case, an’ a true one,” said Joe Baldwin, with an approving nod.