While Joe was dressing, after vigorously rubbing himself, the diver was taken away. Dr. Wertz accompanied him, and promised to see Joe again, for our hero had certain questions he wanted to ask the physician.
Joe then gave the newspaper men the chance they had been waiting for. Several of them had flocked to the scene of the accident as soon as it was known that something mysterious had happened to the diver. And Joe was in a position to tell exactly what the situation was down under the water, though he had not yet heard just how the diver came to be caught.
Joe described his own work modestly enough, but the newspaper men were shrewd enough to guess what Joe had left out, and one may be sure, in the writing of the story, they omitted none of the thrills.
It was a "big story" and soon was being telegraphed over the country, though, of course, the local papers made the most of it, spreading it entirely across their front pages, using big headlines. Joe's picture was snapped by several photographers, one having secured a view of Joe in his ragged trousers and old shirt—the improvised bathing suit.
"Well, I suppose we might as well be getting back to the circus," said Joe to Helen, when he could get away from the reporters and photographers. An admiring crowd of boys followed him as he made his way out to his motor-cycle.
"Are you going on with your act—after what you have gone through with?" asked Helen in surprise.
"Why not?" Joe asked in some astonishment. "No one else can take my place, can he?"
"No, but I should think you'd be so exhausted that you couldn't perform."
"Oh, I'm all right," said Joe easily; but, truth to tell, he did feel the strain. "I may not try to break any under-water records," he went on, "but I'll do all the rest of it."
Some of the circus folk had witnessed the sensational rescue by Joe, and when he and Helen reached the circus grounds our hero was met by Jim Tracy.