To make a complete four minutes he must stay under water four seconds more, and seconds, now, were like hours to him.
There was a ringing in his ears. His head throbbed painfully, he began to yawn and stretch again, as though awakening from a sleep. He looked up and saw Jim Tracy peering anxiously down into the tank. The ring-master realized that this was longer than Joe had ever stayed under water before, and he thought perhaps something had gone wrong, as it had in the case of Benny. The ring-master was calling off the half minutes to the crowd, in which many were holding watches.
A few had tried to imitate Joe's feat, but had given it up as a hopeless task.
"The boy fish has now been under water, without breathing, four minutes, ladies and gentlemen!'" cried the ring-master. "He has beaten his own record!"
It was indeed true. But still Joe did not come up. He was fighting for time now—fighting for fractions of a second. He felt as if he would burst, but he did not come up. He saw, by his clock, that he had stayed under four minutes. A second passed—two—three—and still Joe was under water. Then he could not stand it longer. He had come close to the world's second best record at that.
Four seconds—five—and at the last tick of the five seconds over the four minutes, Joe shot up to the surface. He tried not to show his exhaustion as he climbed, dripping wet, out on to the platform and bowed to the plaudits of the enthusiastic crowd, but it was hard work for Joe to keep up. He did it, however.
"Good work, old man!" cried the ring-master as he helped put the bath robe about Joe. "Great work! How'd you do it?"
"Oh—I—I just did it!" panted Joe, breathing in deeply of the life-giving air.
"You didn't tell me you were going to pull off a stunt like that."
"I—I didn't know, myself, whether or not I could do it," said Joe, as he started for his dressing room. "And I didn't want a failure."