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Eva started pumping, while with her other hand she carefully paid out the air-line and signal-cord. But in their close attention to the task in hand, neither had noticed a low, knifelike launch that had followed them and that was now hovering a short distance off. Locke was now walking over the shell-strewn bottom, examining curious objects here and there.
Having a good chance to lie out of it if they were accused, Williams and Bradford might be deliberately trying the nerve of the new boss. The presumption did not breed fear; it bred wrath, hot and vindictive. Two sharp tugs at the signal-cord brought Bradford from the engine. The memory of the conductor's gruff replies and easy impudence was fresh enough to make Lidgerwood's reprimand harsh.
"No, sir; a moray's teeth ain't set that way. 'Is teeth set backwards so they 'old anything solid. 'E started to swallow the tube, the moray did, and jerked the diver on 'is back so that 'e couldn't pull the signal-cord. 'E would have been drowned sure, for 'e was forty feet down, but the water was so clear that some one on board the boat saw the fish attack 'im, and they pulled 'im up."
It was a slow process, letting down the cage; on account of the danger of gas, and the newness of the cage, it was necessary to proceed a few feet at a time, waiting for a pull upon the signal-cord to tell that the men were all right. After they had reached the bottom, there would be more time, no one could say how long, before they came upon survivors with signs of life in them.
In our own country the conductor's hand touches the signal-cord and the train moves. At Ronda, a bell in the station rang, then a red-capped employee trotted along the length of the train ringing a hand dinner bell.
In Lidgerwood's calendar, time-killing on regular trains stood next to an infringement of the rules providing for the safety of life and property. His hand was on the signal-cord when, chancing to look back, he saw that the passenger-train had made only the momentary time-card stop at the summit station, and was coming on.
These "helmets" were strange looking contrivances, fastened over the head and shoulders, air-tight, and provided with oxygen sufficient to last for an hour or more. The men who wore them sat in a big bucket which was let down the shaft with a windlass, and every now and then they pulled on a signal-cord to let those on the surface know they were alive.
I jerked savagely at my signal-cord to let them know that I wanted to be pulled up, it was possible that I might reach the surface before being suffocated, but the cord offered no resistance; I pulled it toward me as I jerked. It had been cut or broken. "Then I took hold of my air-tube and pulled it. It, too, was unattached at the other end; it had no connection with the air-pump.
This time, for a wonder, Stagers allowed me to leave unaccompanied. I hastened through to the nearer end of the hindmost car, and stood on the platform. I instantly cut the signal-cord. Then I knelt down, and, waiting until the two cars ran together, I tugged at the connecting-pin. As the cars came together, I could lift it a little, then as the strain came on the coupling the pin held fast.
I pulled in the end of the signal-cord, and I found it had not been rubbed and torn by barnacles; the end of it had been clean cut with a knife. I remembered that this was the case with the air-tube; as I placed it into the bung-hole of the first hogshead I had noticed how smoothly it had been severed. "Now I felt a tug at the rope by which I was raised and lowered. I didn't like this.
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