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Updated: July 5, 2025
Had they been mere ordinary divers, attired in the well-known regulation diving-dress, they would have been unable to communicate with each other, save by the somewhat slow and awkward means of a slate and a piece of chalk.
It all seemed so neat and clean and straightforward, and what rough chaps call a 'cert. And we used to speculate how the other blessed lot, the proper salvagers, who'd started two days before us, were getting on, until our sides fairly ached. We all messed together in the Sanderses' cabin it was a curious crew, all officers and no men and there stood the diving-dress waiting its turn.
Among other things, Rooney remarked that he had heard it said a diving-dress contained sufficient air in it to keep a man alive for more than five minutes. "I have heard the same," said Edgar. "Come, David," suggested Joe Baldwin, "let's test it on you." "Ready," said Maxwell, rising and wiping his huge mouth. The proposal which was made in jest was thereupon carried out in earnest!
He had time to reflect that he really had been at, or near, the bottom of the sea at all events over head and ears in water for several minutes without being drowned, even without being moistened, and his faith in the diving-dress, though still weak, had dawned sufficiently to assert itself as a power. "Ha! My lad, you'll do.
Dinner being over, Maxwell put on his diving-dress; the Chinamen set the pump going, and the front-glass was screwed on. Air was forced into the dress until it was completely inflated and looked as if ready to burst, while Maxwell stood on the deck holding on to a back-stay.
There our diving-dress was taken off, not without some trouble, and, fairly worn out from want of food and sleep, I returned to my room, in great wonder at this surprising excursion at the bottom of the sea.
To go down in the diving-dress, that was my absorbing fancy; and with the countenance of a certain handsome scamp of a diver, Bob Bain by name, I gratified the whim.
And, though perhaps you'd scarcely credit it, I was the tribal god of those beastly savages for pretty nearly four months.... "What else could I do, man? But I didn't wear that diving-dress all the time. I made 'em rig me up a sort of holy of holies, and a deuce of a time I had too, making them understand what it was I wanted them to do.
The poor diving-dress of self-conceit was sadly tattered! With the fairy tale of suicide, of a refuge always open to him, he had hitherto beguiled and supported himself in the trials of life; and behold! that also was only a fairy tale, that also was folk-lore.
Nevertheless, that day's trial of Western ingenuity has borne much fruit, for we are now told, by the best authorities, that at the present time the diving-dress is very extensively used in sponge, pearl, and coral fisheries in many parts of the world where naked divers alone were employed not many years ago; and that in the Greek Archipelago and on the Turkish and Barbary coasts alone upwards of three hundred diving apparatuses are employed in the sponge fisheries, with immense advantage to all concerned and to the world at large.
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