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Multitudes of packages had arrived, by land and water, from London, and Liverpool, and Chester, and Manchester, and Birmingham, and various parts of the mountains: books, wine, cheese, globes, mathematical instruments, turkeys, telescopes, hams, tongues, microscopes, quadrants, sextants, fiddles, flutes, tea, sugar, electrical machines, figs, spices, air-pumps, soda-water, chemical apparatus, eggs, French-horns, drawing books, palettes, oils and colours, bottled ale and porter, scenery for a private theatre, pickles and fish-sauce, patent lamps and chandeliers, barrels of oysters, sofas, chairs, tables, carpets, beds, looking-glasses, pictures, fruits and confections, nuts, oranges, lemons, packages of salt salmon, and jars of Portugal grapes.
It was a long time, he said, before anything was suspected to be wrong, as the men often remain down for an hour without a single signal coming from them. The difficulty of working the air-pumps first roused their suspicions; and when they found that the bell would not respond to the action of the crane, they knew at once that it had got fixed among some part of the wreck.
Eads at once returned to Keokuk, and, buying a forty-gallon whiskey hogshead, took it out to the wreck; and having knocked out one head, he slung pigs of lead round his improvised diving-bell, made a seat inside it, rigged it to his derrick and air-pumps, and then asked the diver to go down in it.
By means of plates constructed for the purpose, place the other foot and hand under the receivers of two air-pumps. Exhaust the receivers. Exhibit a pint of French brandy, and await the result." "Which would presently arrive in the form of grim Death," said Kopy-Keck. "If it should, she would yet die in doing our duty," retorted Hum-Drum.
Her father may be a lexicographer or a dry-salter, a designer of dirigible balloons or a manufacturer of air-pumps; he may even be a person of independent means, who lives in a big, new, stuccoed villa in the suburbs of Vienna, and devotes his leisure to the propagation of orchids: yet all the while a miller.
Bethinking himself of these dresses, the captain conceived that he was justified, in the circumstances, in making temporary use of them; but he was disappointed to find, on inquiry, that not a man of his ordinary crew had ever seen a diving-dress put on, or its attendant air-pumps worked. In these circumstances he sent for the chief engineer.
"Sure I've done it twice a'ready," replied Rooney, who was attending to our hero's life-line while Ram-stam and Chok-foo toiled at the air-pumps. "What does he reply?" asked Joe. "He replies, `all right, but nothin' more. If he knew the imptiness of my och! There he goes at last, four tugs. Come along, my hearty," said Rooney, coiling away the slack as Edgar rose slowly to the surface.
When all was ready Edgar issued from the deck-cabin, in which he meant to dress, to take a final look at the air-pumps. In the flutter of excitement he had for one moment, and for the first time since the beginning of the voyage, totally forgotten the existence of Aileen.
Another plan was to have tubes from the bell to the surface by which air was made to circulate downwards, at first being forced down by a pair of bellows, and afterwards by means of air-pumps. Round the inside of the bell ran a seat for the divers. One or more holes fitted with thick plate-glass, gave them light and enabled them to use the various tools and implements required in their vocation.
Higher and higher the crabs arose, their powerful air-pumps working at their greatest capacity, until their ponderous pincers became visible above the water. Then into the minds of the officers of the Llangaron flashed the true object of this uprising, which to the crew had seemed an intention on the part of the sea-devils to clamber on board.
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