But hold! Reader; we must not go on. If you are a boy, you won’t mind what followed; if a girl, you have no right to pry into such matters. We therefore beg leave at this point to shut the lids of our dexter eye, and drop the curtain.
Chapter Twenty Seven.
The last.
One day Joe Baldwin, assisted by his old friend, Rooney Machowl, was busily engaged down at the bottom of the sea, off the Irish coast, slinging a box of gold specie. He had given the signal to haul up, and Rooney had moved away to put slings round another box, when the chain to which the gold was suspended snapt, and the box descended on Joe. If it had hit him on the back in its descent it would certainly have killed him, but it only hit his collar-bone and broke it.
Joe had just time to give four pulls on his lines, and then fainted. He was instantly hauled up, carefully unrobed, and put to bed.
This was a turning-point in our diver’s career. The collar-bone was all right in the course of a month or two, but Mrs Baldwin positively refused to allow her goodman to go under water again.
“The little fortin’ you made out in Chiny,” she said one evening while seated with her husband at supper in company with Rooney and his wife, “pays for our rent, an’ somethin’ over. You’re a handy man, and can do a-many things to earn a penny, and I can wash enough myself to keep us both. You’ve bin a ’ard workin’ man, Joe, for many a year. You’ve bin long enough under water. You’ll git rheumatiz, or somethin’ o’ that sort, if you go on longer, so I’m resolved that you shan’t do it—there!”
“Molly, cushla!” said Machowl, in a modest tone, “I hope you won’t clap a stopper on my goin’ under water for some time yit—plaze.”