Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters

by R. M. Ballantyne

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO.

  MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS, ENDING WITH A "SCRIMMAGE" UNDER WATER.

  We are back again in Hong-Kong--in the pagoda--with our old friendsseated comfortably round their little table enjoying a good supper.

  Pretty little Mrs Machowl has prepared it, and is now assisting at thepartaking of it. Young Master Teddy Machowl is similarly engaged on hisfather's knee. The child has grown appallingly during its father'sabsence! Ram-stam and Chok-foo are in waiting--gazing at each otherwith the affection of Chinese lovers re-united.

  "What a sight you are, Rooney!" said Mrs Machowl, pausing between bitesto look at her husband.

  "Sure it's the same may be said of yoursilf, cushla!" replied Rooney,stuffing his child's mouth with sweet potato.

  "Yes, but it's what a _fright_ you are, I mane," said Mrs Machowl.

  "An' it's what a purty cratur _you_ are that _I_ mane," replied Rooney,repeating the dose to Teddy, who regarded his father with looks of deepaffection.

  "Ah! Go 'long wid you. Sure it's your nose is spoilt entirely," saidMrs Machowl.

  "An' it's your own that is swaiter than iver, which more than makes upthe difference," retorted her lord.--"Howld it open as wide as ye canthis time, Ted, me boy; there, that's your sort--but don't choke, yespalpeen."

  There seemed indeed some occasion for the latter admonition, for Teddy,unused to such vigorous treatment, was beginning to look purple in theface and apoplectic about the eyes. In short, there is everyprobability that an attack of croup, or something dreadful, would haveensued if the child's mother had not risen hastily and snatched it awayfrom the would-be infanticide.

  "Now then, Ram-stam and Chok-foo," said Edgar Berrington, putting downhis spoon, "clear away the rat's-tail soup, and bring on the roastpuppy."

  Grinning from ear to ear, and with almost closed eyes, the Chineseservitors obeyed.

  While they cleared the table and laid the second course, theconversation became general. Previously it had been particular,referring chiefly to the soup and the free circulation of the salt.

  "So, then," observed Joe Baldwin, leaning back in his chair, "we mustmake up our minds to be content with what we have got. Well, it an't sobad after all! Let me see. How much did you say the total is, MisterEddy?"

  "Close upon eight thousand five hundred pounds."

  "A tidy little sum," observed Rooney, with an air of satisfaction.

  "Eight thousand--eh?" repeated Joe; "hum, well, we'll cut off the fivehundred for expenses and passage home, and that leaves eight thousandclear, which, according to agreement, gives each of us two thousandpounds."

  Maxwell, who still looked pale and thin from the effects of his lateaccident, nodded his head slowly, and growled, "Two thousand--jus' so."

  "An' that, Molly, my dear," said Rooney, "if properly invisted, givesyou an' me a clair income--only think, an _income_, Molly--of wanhundred a year! It's true, cushla! That ye won't be able to rowl inyer carridge an' walk in silks an' satins on that income, but it'll paythe rint an' taxes, owld girl, an' help Teddy to a collidge eddication--to say nothin' o' pipes an' baccy. Ochone!--if we'd only not lost thefirst haul, we'd have bin millerinaires be this time. I wouldn't havecalled the Quane me grandmother."

  "Come, Rooney, be grateful for what you've got," said Edgar. "Enough isas good as a feast."

  "Ah! Sur, it'll be time to say that when we've finished the puppy,"replied the Irishman, as Chok-foo placed on the board a savoury roastwhich bore some resemblance to the animal named, though, having had itshead and legs amputated, there could be no absolute certainty on thepoint. Whatever it was, the party attacked it with relish, and silencereigned until it was finished, after which conversation flowed again--somewhat languidly at first. When, however, pipes were got out by thosewho smoked, and chairs were placed in the verandah, and no sound washeard around save the yelling of Chinese children who were romping inthe Chinese kennel that skirted the pagoda, and the champing of the jawsof Ram-stam and Chok-foo as they masticated inside--then came the feastof reason, not to mention the flow of soul.

  "I wonder what our friends at Whitstable will say to this ventur' ofours," said Maxwell.

  "Have you many friends there?" asked Edgar.

  "Many?--of course I has. W'y, I suppose every English diver must havefriends there."

  "Where is it?" asked Edgar.

  "Why, sir, don't you know Whitstable?" exclaimed Joe Baldwin, insurprise.

  "You forget, Joe," replied Edgar, with a smile, "that although I havelearnt how to dive, and have read a good deal about the history ofdiving, I am only an amateur after all, and cannot be supposed to knoweverything connected with the profession. All I know about Whitstableis 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 coastof Kent, and is famous for its oyster-beds and its divers. How it cameto 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 thenatives a taste for the work. Anyhow, they've got the taste verydecided somehow, an' after every spell o' dirty weather they're sure tohave telegrams from all parts of the coast, and you'll see Lloyds'agents huntin' up the divers in the public-houses an' packin' 'em offwi' their gear right and left by rail to look after salvage.

  "These men," continued Joe, "are most of 'em handicraftmen as well asdivers, because you know, sir, it would be of no use to send down a merelabourer to repair the bottom of a ship, no matter how good he was atdivin'; so, you'll find among 'em masons, and shipbuilders, andcarpenters, and engineers--"

  "Ah!" interrupted Edgar, "I was just wondering how they would manage ifit were found necessary to have the engines of a sunk steamer taken topieces and sent up."

  "Well, sir," rejoined Joe, "they've got men there who can dive, and whoknow as much about marine engines as you do yourself. And these menmake lots of tin, for a good diver can earn a pound a day, an' be keptin pretty regular employment in deep water. In shallow water he canearn from ten to fifteen shillings a day. Besides this, they makespecial arrangements for runnin' extra risks. Then the savin' theysometimes effect is amazin'. Why, sir, although you do know somethin'of the advantages of diving, you can never know fully what good they doin the world at large. Just take the case of the _Agamemnon_ atSebastopol--"

  "Och!" interrupted Rooney, whose visage was perplexed by reason of hispipe 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 thatmanaged that job. Tarry, we called him--though that wasn't his rightname. This is how it was. The fleet was blazin' away at thefortifications, an' of coorse the fortifications--out o' politeness ifnothin' else--was blazin' away at the fleet, and smoke was curlin' uplike a chimbley on fire, an' big balls was goin' about like pais in arattle, an' small shot like hail was blowin' horizontal, an' men wasbein' shot an' cut to pieces, an' them as warn't was cheerin' as ifthere was any glory in wholesale murther--bah! I wouldn't give a day atDonnybrook wid a shillelah for all the sieges of Sebastopool as ever Iheard tell of. Well, suddintly, bang goes a round shot slap through thehull 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, andsends down my friend Tarry to look at the hole. He goes down, looks atit, 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 placeharder than ever."

  "That _was_ a good case, an' a _true_ one," said Joe Baldwin, with anapproving nod.

  "And these divers, Mr Edgar," continued Joe, "sometimes go on their ownhook, like we have done this time, with more or
less luck. There wasone chum of mine who took it into his head to try his chances at thewreck of the _Royal Charter_, long after all hope of further salvage hadbeen abandoned, and in a short time he managed to recover between threeand four hundred pounds sterling."

  "An immense amount of money, they do say, was recovered from the _RoyalCharter_ by divers," observed Maxwell.

  "That is true, and it happens," said Edgar, sadly, "that I know a fewinteresting facts regarding that vessel. I know of some people whosehearts were broken by the loss of relatives in that wreck. There weremany such--God comfort them! But that is not what I meant to speak of.The facts I refer to are connected with the treasure lost in the vessel.Just before leaving London I had occasion to call on the gentleman whohad the management of the recovered gold, and he told me severalinteresting things. First of all, the whole of the gold that could beidentified was handed at once over to its owners; but this matter ofidentification was not easy, for much of the gold was found quite loosein the form of sovereigns and nuggets and dust. The dust was ordered tobe sent up with the `dirt' that surrounded it, and a process ofgold-washing was instituted, after the regular diggings fashion, with abowl and water. Tons of `dirt' were sent up and washed in this way, anda large quantity of gold saved. The agent showed me the bowl that wasused on this occasion. He also showed me sovereigns that had been keptas curious specimens. Some of them were partly destroyed, as if theyhad been caught between iron-plates and cut in half; others were more orless defaced and bent, and a few had been squeezed almost into anunrecognisable shape. In one place, he told me, the divers saw a pileof sovereigns through a rent in an iron-plate. The rent was too smallto admit a man's arm, and the plates could not be dislodged. Thedivers, therefore, made a pair of iron tongs, with which they picked outthe sovereigns, and thus saved a large sum of money. One very curiouscase of identification occurred. A bag of sovereigns was found with noname on it. A claimant appeared, but he could tell of no mark to provethat he was the rightful owner. Of course it could not be given up, andit appeared as if the unfortunate man (who was indeed the owner) mustrelinquish his claim, when in a happy moment his wife remembered thatshe had put a brass `token' into the bag with the gold. The bag wassearched, the token was found, and the gold was immediately handed tothem."

  "Molly, my dear," said Rooney Machowl at this point, "you make a note o'that; an' if ever you have to do with bags o' goold, just putt a brasstoken or two into 'em."

  "Ah! Shut up, Rooney," said Mrs Machowl, in a voice so sweet that thecontrast between it and her language caused Edgar and Joe to laugh.

  "Well, then," continued Edgar, "in many other curious ways gold wasidentified and delivered to its owners: thus, in one case, an incompleteseal, bearing part of the legs of a griffin, was found on a bag of twothousand sovereigns, and the owner, showing the seal with which he hadstamped it, established his claim. Of course in all cases where bars ofgold were found with the owners' names stamped on them, the property wasat once handed over; but after all was done that could be done by meansof the most painstaking inquiry, an immense amount of gold necessarilyremained unclaimed."

  "And I s'pose if it wasn't for us divers," said Maxwell, "the wholeconsarn would have remained a dead loss to mankind."

  "True for ye," responded Rooney; "it's not often ye come out wid such ablaze of wisdom as that, David! It must be the puppy as has stirred yeup, boy, or, mayhap, the baccy!"

  "Take care _you_ don't stir me up, lad, else it may be worse for you,"growled Maxwell.

  "Och! I'm safe," returned the Irishman, carelessly; "I'd putt Mollybetwain us, an' sure ye'd have to come over her dead body before ye'dgit at me.--It wasn't you, was it, David," continued Rooney, with suddenearnestness, "that got knocked over by a blast at the works in Ringwallharbour two or three years ago?"

  "No, it warn't me," responded Maxwell; "it was long Tom Skinclip. Hewas too tall for a diver--he was. They say he stood six futt four inhis socks; moreover he was as thin as a shadow from a bad gas-lamp. Hewas workin' one day down in the 'arbour, layin' stones at thefoundations of the noo breakwater, when they set off a blast about ahundred yards off from where he was workin', an' so powerful was theblast that it knocked him clean on his back. He got such a fright thathe signalled violently to haul up, an' they did haul 'im up, expectin'to find one of his glasses broke, or his toobes bu'sted. There wasnothin' wotsomedever the matter with 'im, but he wouldn't go down againthat day. 'Owsever, he got over it, an' after that went down to work ata wreck somewhere in the eastern seas--not far from Ceylon, I'm told.When there 'e got another fright that well-nigh finished him, an' fromthat day he gave up divin' an' tuck to gardening, for which he was muchbetter suited."

  "What happened to him?" asked Edgar.

  "I'm not rightly sure," answered Maxwell, refilling his pipe, "but I'vebin told he had to go down one day in shallow water among sea-weed. Itwas a beautiful sort o' submarine garden, so to speak, an' long TomSkinclip was so fond o' flowers an' gardens nat'rally, that he forgothisself, an' went wanderin' about what he called the `submarine groves'till they thought he must have gone mad. They could see him quiteplain, you see, from the boat, an' they watched him while he wanderedabout. The sea-weed was up'ard of six feet high, tufted on the top witha sort o' thing you might a'most fancy was flowers. The colours, too,was bright. Among the branches o' this submarine forest, or grove,small lobsters, an' shrimps, an' other sorts o' shell-fish, were doin'dooty as birds--hoppin' from one branch to another, an' creepin' aboutin all directions.

  "After a time long Tom Skinclip he sat down on a rock an' wiped theperspiration off his brow--at least he tried to do it, which set the menin the boat all off in roars of laughter, for, d'ee see, Skinclip was anabsent sort of a feller, an' used to do strange things. No doubt whenhe sat down on the rock he felt warm, an' bein' a narvish sort o' chap,I make no question but he was a-sweatin' pretty hard, so, withoutthinkin', he up with his arm, quite nat'ral like, an' drawed it acrosswhere his brow would have bin if the helmet hadn't been on. It didn'tseem to strike him as absurd, however, for he putt both hands on 'isknees, an' sat lookin' straight before 'im.

  "He hadn't sat long in this way when they see'd a huge fish--about twofutt long--comin' slowly through the grove behind 'im. It was one o'them creeters o' the deep as seems to have had its head born five or sixsizes too big for its tail--with eyes an' mouth to match. It had alsotwo great horns above its eyes, an' a cravat or frill o' bristles roundits neck. Its round eyes and half-open mouth gave it the appearance o'bein' always more or less in a state of astonishment. P'r'aps it was--at the fact of its havin' bin born at all! Anyhow, it swum'd slowlyalong till it cotched sight o' Skinclip, when it went at him, an' lookedat the back of his helmet in great astonishment, an' appeared to smellit, but evidently it could make nothin' of it. Then it looked all downhis back with an equal want of appreciation. Arter that it came roundto the front, and looked straight in at Skinclip's bull's-eye! They dosay it was a sight to see the start he gave!

  "He jump up as smart a'most as if he'd bin in the open air, an' theyobsarved, when he turned round, that a huge lobster of some unbeknownspecies was holdin' on to his trousers with all its claws like a limpet!The fish--or ripslang, as one of the men called it, who said he knowedit well--turned out to be a pugnaceous creetur, for no sooner did it seeSkinclip's great eyes lookin' at it in horror, than it set up its frillof spikes, threw for'ard the long horns, an' went slap at the bull's-eyefit to drive it in. Skinclip he putt down his head, an' the ripslangmade five or six charges at the helmet without much effect. Then itchanged its tactics, turned on its side, wriggled under the helmet, an'looked in at Skinclip with one of its glarin' eyes close to the glass.At the same time the lobster gave him a tree-mendious tug behind. Thiswas more than Skinclip could stand. They see'd him jump round, seizethe life-line, an' give it four deadly pulls, but his comrades paid noattention to it. The lobster gave him another tug, an' the ripslangprepared for another charge. It seemed
to have got some extra spikesset up in its wrath, for its whole body was bristlin' more or less bythis time.

  "Again Skinclip tugged like a maniac at the line. The ripslang charged;the lobster tugged; the poor feller stepped back hastily, got his heelsentangled in sea-weed, and went down head first into the grove!

  "The men got alarmed by this time, so they pulled him up as fast as theycould, an' got him inboard in a few minutes; but they do say," addedMaxwell, with emphasis, "that that ripslang leaped right out o' thewater arter him, an' the lobster held on so that they had to chop itsclaws off with a hatchet to make it let go. They supped off it the gamenight, and long Tom Skinclip, who owned an over strong appetite, had abad fit of indisgestion in consikence."