Under the Waves: Diving in Deep Waters
David Maxwell—for it was he—passed out with an angry scowl, and as he strode with noisy tread across the hall, said something uncommonly pithy to the footman about “upstarts” and “puppies,” and “people who thought they was made o’ different dirt from others,” accompanied with many other words and expressions which we may not repeat.
To all of this John replied with bland smiles and polite bows, hoping that the effects of the interview might not render him feverish, and reminding him that if it did he was in a better position than most men for cooling himself at the bottom of the sea.
“Farewell,” said John earnestly; “and if you should take a fancy to honour us any day with your company to dinner, do send a line to say you’re coming.”
John did not indulge in this pleasantry until the exasperated diver was just outside of the house, and it was well that he was so prudent, for Maxwell turned round like a tiger and struck with tremendous force at his face. His hard knuckles met the panel of the door, in which they left an indelible print, and at the same time sent a sound like a distant cannon shot into the library.
“I’m afraid I have been a little too sharp with him,” said Mr Hazlit, assisting his daughter to replace the jewels.
Aileen agreed with him, but as nothing could induce her to condemn her father with her lips she made no reply.
“But,” continued the old gentleman, “the rascal had no right to enter my house without ringing. He might have been a thief, you know. He looked rough and coarse enough to be one.”
“Oh papa,” said Aileen entreatingly, “don’t be too hasty in judging those who are sometimes called rough and coarse. I do assure you I’ve met many men in my district who are big and rough and coarse to look at, but who have the feelings and hearts of tender women.”
“I know it, simple one; you must not suppose that I judged him by his exterior; I judged him by his rude manner and conduct, and I do not extend my opinion of him to the whole class to which he belongs.”
It is strange—and illustrative of the occasional perversity of human reasoning—that Mr Hazlit did not perceive that he himself had given the diver cause to judge him, Mr Hazlit, very harshly, and the worst of it was that Maxwell did, in his wrath, extend his opinion of the merchant to the entire class to which he belonged, expressing a deep undertoned hope that the “whole bilin’ of ’em” might end their days in a place where he spent many of his own, namely, at the bottom of the sea. It is to be presumed that he wished them to be there without the benefit of diving-dresses!
“It is curious, however,” continued Mr Hazlit, “that I had been thinking this very morning about making inquiries after a diver, one whom I have frequently heard spoken of as an exceedingly able and respectable man—Balding or Bolding or some such name, I think.”
“Oh! Baldwin, Joe Baldwin, as his intimate friends call him,” said Aileen eagerly. “I know him well; he is in my district.”
“What!” exclaimed Mr Hazlit, “not one of your paupers?”
Aileen burst into a merry laugh. “No, papa, no; not a pauper certainly. He’s a well-off diver, and a Wesleyan—a local preacher, I believe—but he lives in my district, and is one of the most zealous labourers in it. Oh! If you saw him, papa, with his large burly frame and his rough bronzed kindly face, and broad shoulders, and deep bass voice and hearty laugh.”
The word suggested the act, for Aileen went off again at the bare idea of Joe Baldwin being a pauper—one at whose feet, she said, she delighted to sit and learn.
“Well, I’m glad to have such a good account of him from one so well able to judge,” rejoined her father, “and as I mean to go visit him without delay I’ll be obliged if you’ll give me his address.”
Having received it, the merchant sallied forth into those regions of the town where, albeit she was not a guardian of the poor, his daughter’s light figure was a much more familiar object than his own.
“Does a diver named Baldwin live here?” asked Mr Hazlit of a figure which he found standing in a doorway near the end of a narrow passage.
The figure was hazy and indistinct by reason of the heavy wreaths of tobacco-smoke wherewith it was enveloped.
“Yis, sur,” replied the figure; “he lives in the door it the other ind o’ the passage. It’s not over-light here, sur; mind yer feet as ye go, an’ pay attintion to your head, for what betune holes in the floor an’ beams in the ceilin’, tall gintlemen like you, sur, come to grief sometimes.”
Thanking the figure for its civility, Mr Hazlit knocked at the door indicated, but there was no response.
“Sure it’s out they are!” cried the figure from the other end of the passage. “Joe Baldwin’s layin’ a charge under the wreck off the jetty to-day—no doubt that’s what’s kep’ ’im, and it’s washin’-day with Mrs Joe, I belave; but I’m his pardner, sur, an’ if ye’ll step this way, Mrs Machowl’ll be only too glad to see ye, sur, an’ I can take yer orders.”
Not a little amused by this free-and-easy invitation, Mr Hazlit entered a small apartment, which surprised him by its clean and tidy appearance. A pretty little Irishwoman, with a pert little turned-up nose, auburn hair so luxuriant that it could not be kept in order, and a set of teeth that glistened in their purity, invited him to sit down, and wiped a chair with her apron for his accommodation.
“You’ve got a nice little place here,” remarked the visitor, looking round him.
“Troth, sur, ye wouldn’t have said that if you’d seen it whin we first came to it. Of all the dirty places I iver saw! I belave an Irish pig would have scunnered at it, an’ held his nose till he got out. It’s very well for England, but we was used to cleaner places in the owld country. Hows’iver we’ve got it made respictable now, and we’re not hard to plaze.”
This was a crushing reply. It upset Mr Hazlit’s preconceived ideas regarding the two countries so completely that he was perplexed. Not being a man of rapid thought he changed the subject:—
“You are a diver, you say?”
“I am, sur.”
“And Mr Baldwin’s partner—if I understand you correctly?”
“Well, we work together—whin we’re not workin’ apart—pritty regular. He took in hand to train me some months gone by, an’ as our two missusses has took a fancy to aich other, we’re likely to hold on for some time—barrin’ accidents, av coorse.”
“Well, then,” said Mr Hazlit, “I came to see Mr Baldwin about a vessel of mine, which was wrecked a few days ago on the coast of Wales—”
“Och! The Seagull it is,” exclaimed Rooney.
“The same; and as it is a matter of importance that I should have the wreck visited without delay, I shall be obliged by your sending your partner to my house this evening.”
Rooney promised to send Baldwin up, and took his wife Molly to witness, with much solemnity, that he would not lose a single minute. Thereafter the conversation became general, and at last the merchant left the place much shaken in his previous opinion of Irish character, and deeply impressed with the sagacity of Rooney Machowl.
The result of this visit was that Baldwin was engaged to dive for the cargo of the Seagull, and found himself, a few days later, busy at work on the Welsh coast with a staff of men under him, among whom were our friends Rooney Machowl and surly David Maxwell. The latter had at first declined to have anything to do with the job, but, on consideration of the wages, he changed his mind.
Chapter Five.
Treats of Plots and Plans, Engineering and otherwise
The spot where the wreck of the Seagull lay was a peaceful sequestered cove or bay on the coast of Anglesea. The general aspect of the neighbouring land was bleak. There were no trees, and few bushes. Indeed, the spire of a solitary little church on an adjoining hill was the most prominent object in the scene. The parsonage belonging to it was concealed by a rise in the ground, and the very small hamlet connected with it was hid like a rabbit in the clefts of some rugged cliffs. The little church was one of those temples which are meant to meet the wants of a rural district, and which cause a feeling of surprise in the minds of town visitors as to where the congregation can come from that fills them.
But, bleak though the country was, the immediate shore was interesting and romantic in its form. In one place perpendicular cliffs, cut up by ragged gorges, descended sheer down into deep water, and meeting the constant roll of the Irish Channel, even in calm weather, fringed themselves with lace-work of foam, as if in cool defiance of the ocean. In another place a mass of boulders and shattered rocks stretched out into the sea as if still resistant though for the time subdued. Elsewhere a half-moon of yellow sand received the ripples with a kiss, suggestive of utter conquest and the end of strife.
As we have said, the spot was peaceful, for, at the time to which we refer, ocean and air were still, but ah! Those who have not dwelt near the great deep and beheld its fury when roused can form but a faint conception of the scene that occurred there on the night in which the Seagull went down!
Mr Hazlit thought of the place as something like the region of a “bad debt,”—where a portion of his wealth had been wrecked. Some knew it as the hated spot where they had suffered the loss of all their fortune; but others there were, who, untouched by the thought of material gain or loss, knew it as the scene of the wreck of all their earthly hopes—for the Seagull had been a passenger-ship, and in that quiet bay God in His providence had dealt some of the most awful blows that human beings are capable of bearing.
Close to a bald cliff on the northern shore the foretopmast of the wreck rose a few feet above the calm water. In a cove of the cliff the remains of a mast or yard lay parallel with a deep and thick mass of wreckage, which had surged out and into that cove on the fatal night with such violence that it now lay in small pieces, like giant matchwood. On a patch of gravel not far from that cliff a husband and father had wandered for many days, after being saved—he knew not how—gazing wistfully, hopelessly at the sea which had swallowed up wife and children and fortune. He had been a “successful” gold-digger! On that patch of gravel scenes of terrible suspense had been enacted. Expectant ones had come to inquire whether those whom they sought had really embarked in that vessel, while grave and sympathetic but worn-out or weary men of the Coast-guard, stood ready to give information or to defend the wreck.
In the church on the hill there were dreadful marks on the floor, where the recovered bodies had lain for a time, while frantic relations came and went day by day to search for and claim their dead. Ah, reader, we are not mocking you with fiction. What we refer to is fact. We saw it with our eyes. Peaceful though that spot looked—and often looks—it was once the scene of the wildest of storms, the most terrible of mercantile disasters, and the deepest of human woe.
But we are mingling thoughts with memories. The wreck which has crept into our mind is that of the Royal Charter. The Seagull, although a passenger-ship, and wrecked near the same region, does not resemble that!
At the time of which we write, Joe Baldwin and his men had already saved a considerable portion of the cargo, but during his submarine explorations and meditations Joe had conceived the idea that there was some possibility of saving the vessel itself, for, having recoiled from its first shock and sunk in deep water, the hull was comparatively uninjured.
But Joe, although a good diver, was not a practical engineer. He knew himself to be not a very good judge of such matters, and was too modest to suggest anything to competent submarine engineers. He could not, however, help casting the thing about in his mind for some time. At last, one evening while reading a newspaper that had been got from a passing boat, he observed the return of the ship in which his young friend Edgar Berrington had gone to India. At once he wrote the following letter:—
“My dear Mister Edgar,—I’m in a fix here. It’s my opinion there’s a chance of savin’ a wreck if only good brains was set to work to do it. It would pay if we was to succeed. If you happen to be on the loose just now, as is likely, run over an’ see what you think of it.—Yours to command,
“J.B.”
Our hero received the letter, at once acted on it, and in a few days was on the spot.
“What a change there is in you, my dear sir!” said Joe, looking with admiration at the browned, stalwart youth before him; “why, you’ve grown moustaches!”
“I couldn’t help it, Joe,” replied Edgar; “they would come, and I had no time to shave on board.—But now, tell me about this wreck.”
When Edgar heard that the vessel belonged to Mr Hazlit his first impulse was to have nothing to do with it. He felt that any interference in regard to it would seem like a desire to thrust himself before the merchant’s notice—and that, too, in a needy manner, as if he sought employment at his hands; but on consideration he came to the conclusion that he might act as a wire-puller, give Baldwin the benefit of his knowledge, and allow him to reap the credit and the emoluments. But for a long time the honest diver would not listen to such a suggestion, and was only constrained to give in at last when Edgar threatened to leave him altogether.
“By the way, have you seen Miss Aileen since you came home?” asked Baldwin, while the two friends were seated in the cabin of the diver’s vessel poring, pencil in hand, over several sheets of paper on which were sundry mysterious designs.
“No; I was on the point of paying a visit to my good aunt Miss Pritty, with ulterior ends in view, when your letter reached me and brought me here. To say truth, your note arrived very opportunely, for I was engaged at the time in rather a hard struggle between inclination and duty—not feeling quite sure whether it was right or wise to throw myself in her way just now, for, as you may easily believe, I have not, during my comparatively short absence, made a fortune that is at all likely to satisfy the requirements of her father.”
“I suppose not,” returned the diver. “No doubt, at gold-diggin’s an’ diamond-fields an’ such-like one does hear of a man makin’ a find that enables him to set up his carriage an’ four, and ride, mayhap at a tremendous pace, straight on to ruin by means of it, but as a rule people don’t pick up sovereigns like stones either at home or abroad. It’s the experience of most men, that steady perseverance leads by the shortest road to competence, if not to wealth.—But that’s beside the question. I think you did right, Mister Eddy—excuse an old servant, sir, if it’s taking too much liberty to use the old familiar name,—you did right in coming here instead of going there.”
“So thought I, Baldy—you see that I too can take liberties,—else I should not have come. Your letter solved the difficulty, for, when I was at the very height of the struggle before mentioned—at equipoise so to speak,—and knew not whether to go to the right or to the left, that decided me. I regarded it as a leading of Providence.”
Baldwin turned a rather sudden look of surprise on his young companion.
“A leading of Providence, Mr Eddy! I never heard you use such an expression before.”
“True, but I have learned to use it since I went to sea,” replied our hero quietly.
“That’s strange,” rejoined the diver in a low voice, as if he feared to scare the young man from a subject that was very near his own heart, “very strange, for goin’ to sea has not often the effect of makin’ careless young fellows serious—though it sometimes has, no doubt. How was it, if I—”
“Yes, Baldy,” interrupted Edgar, with a pleasant smile, laying his hand on the diver’s huge shoulder, “I don’t mind making a confidant of you in this as in other matters. I’ll tell you,—the story is short enough. When I parted from Aileen, she made me a present of a New Testament from a pile that she happened to have by her to give to the poor people. To be more particular, I asked for one, and she consented to let me have it. You see I wanted a keepsake! Well, when at sea, I read the Testament regularly, night and morning, for Aileen’s sake, but God in His great love led me at last to read it for the sake of Him whose blessed life and death it records.”
“Then you’ve fairly hauled down the enemy’s colours and hoisted those of the Lord?” asked Baldwin.
“I have been led to do so,” replied the youth modestly but firmly.
“Bless the Lord!” said the diver in a low tone as he grasped Edgar’s hand, while he bowed his head for a moment.
Presently he looked up, and seemed about to resume the subject of conversation when Edgar interrupted him—
“Have you seen or heard anything of Aileen since I left?”
“Nothing, except that she’s been somewhat out of sorts, and her father has sent her up to London for a change.”
“Has he gone to London with her?”
“No, I believe not; he’s taken up a good deal wi’ the cargo o’ this ship, and comes down to see us now and then, but for the most part he remains at home attendin’ to business.”
“Have you spoken to him about raising the hull of the ship?”
“Not yet. He evidently thinks the thing impossible—besides, I wanted to hear your opinion on the matter before sayin’ anything about it.”
“Well, come, let us go into it at once,” said the youth, turning to the sheets of paper before him and taking up a pencil. “You see, Baldwin, this trip of mine as second engineer has been of good service to me in many ways, for, besides becoming practically acquainted with everything connected with marine engines, I have acquired considerable knowledge of things relating to ships in general, and am all the more able to afford you some help in this matter of raising the ship. I’ve been studying a book written by a member of the firm whose dresses you patronise, (Note. ‘The Conquest of the Sea’, by Henry Siebe.) which gives a thorough account in detail of everything connected with diving, and in it there is reference to the various modes that have hitherto been successful in the raising of sunken vessels.”
“I’ve heard of it, but not seen it,” said Baldwin. “Of course I know somewhat about raisin’ ships, havin’ once or twice lent a hand, but I’ve no head for engineerin’. What are the various modes you speak of? That’s not one of ’em, is it?”
He pointed, with a grave smile as he spoke, to the outline of a female head which Edgar had been absently tracing on the paper.
“Well, no,” replied the youth, scribbling out the head, “that’s not one of Siebe and Gorman’s appliances, and yet I venture to prophesy that that head will have a good deal to do with the raising of the Seagull! However, don’t let’s waste more time. Here you are. The first method,—that of putting empty casks in the hold so as to give the hull a floating tendency, and then mooring lighters over it and pushing chains under it,—we may dismiss at once, as being suitable only for small vessels; but the second method is worth considering, namely, that of fixing air-bags of india-rubber in the hold, attaching them to the sides, and then inflating them all at the same time by means of a powerful air-pump. We could get your divers to pass chains under her, and, when she began to rise could haul on these chains by means of lighters moored above, and so move the wreck inshore till she grounded. What say you to that?”
Baldwin shook his head. “She’s too big, I fear, for such treatment.”
“Good-sized vessels have been raised by these air-bags of late,” said Edgar. “Let me see: there were the brig Ridesdale, of 170 tons burthen, sunk off Calshot Castle, and Her Majesty’s gun-brig Partridge, 180 tons, and the brig Dauntless, 179 tons, and last, but not least, the Prince Consort, at Aberdeen, an iron paddle-steamer of 607 tons, and the dead weight lifted was 560 tons, including engines and boilers.”
Still Baldwin shook his head, remarking that the Seagull was full 900 tons.
“Well, then,” resumed the young engineer, “here is still another method. We might send down your men to make all the openings,—ports, windows, etcetera—water-tight, fix a shield over the hole she knocked in her bottom on the cliffs, and then, by means of several water-pumps reaching from above the surface to the hold, clear her of water. When sufficiently floated by such means a steam-tug could haul her into port. The iron steamship London was, not long ago, raised and saved at Dundee in that way. She rose four feet after the pumps had been worked only two hours, and while she was being towed into dock the pumps were still kept going. It was a great success—and so may it be in this case. Then, you know, we might construct a pontoon by making a raft to float on a multitude of empty barrels, pass chains under the Seagull and fix them to this pontoon at low water, so that when the tide rose she would rise perforce along with the pontoon and tide, and could be moved inshore till she grounded; then, waiting for low tide, we could taughten the chains again, and repeat the process till we got her ashore. Or, better still, we could hire Siebe and Gorman’s patent pontoon, which, if I mistake not, is much the same thing that I now suggest carried out to perfection.”
“I’m not sure that the pontoon you speak of has been launched yet. I’m afraid it’s only in model,” said Baldwin.
“More’s the pity,” rejoined Edgar, “but I can go to London and ascertain. In any case, I shall have to go to London to make inquiries, and secure the necessary apparatus.”
“Are you sure,” said Baldwin, with a look of great solemnity, “that your going to London has nothing whatever to do with apparatus of that sort?”
He placed a blunt forefinger, as he spoke on the obliterated sketch of the female head.
“Oh you suspicious old fellow!” replied Edgar; “come, you are presuming now.—We will change the subject, and go on deck.”
“Human natur’s the same everywhere,” observed Baldwin, with a quiet laugh as he rose. “Same with me exactly when I was after Susan. For one glance of her black eye I’d have gone straight off to China or Timbuctoo at half-an-hour’s notice. Well, well!—Now, Mister Eddy, don’t you think it would be as well for you to go down and have a look at the wreck? You’ll then be better able to judge as to what’s best to be done, an’ I’ve got a noo dress by the firm of Denayrouze, with a speakin’-apparatus, which’ll fit you. I got it for myself, and we’re much about a size—barrin’ the waist, in which I have the advantage of you as to girth. Their noo pump and lamp, too, will interest you. See, here is the pump.”
As he spoke, the diver pointed to a pump which commended itself at first sight by its extreme simplicity. Whether or not it was better than the more complex, but well-tried, pumps of other makers, our hero was well aware could only be proved by time and experience. Meanwhile he was favourably impressed with it.
The peculiarities of the pump referred to were, first, and most obvious, that it had no outer wooden case or box, and the parts were exceedingly few and simple. It was on the lever principle, the cylinders, instead of the pistons, being movable. The pistons were fixed to a bed-plate and pointed upwards, so that the pump was, as it were, turned upside down, a position which, among other advantages, allowed of the plungers being covered with water, through which the air was forced and partially cooled. Another and important peculiarity was an air-reservoir which received air from the pump direct, and then passed it on to the diver, so that even if the pumps should stop working there would still be a supply of air flowing down to the diver for several minutes. The lamp referred to was also a novelty, inasmuch as it was supplied with air by a separate tube from the reservoir in the same way as if it were a separate human diver. The Henkie and Davis lamp burns, on the other hand, entirely without air, by means of certain acids. That of Siebe and Gorman is an electric-lamp. Both are said to be effective and economical.
Putting on the new dress, our hero was soon ready to descend, with the lamp burning in his hand.
“There are three men down just now,” said Baldwin as he was about to screw on the mouth-piece, “two of ’em bein’ your old friends Maxwell and Rooney Machowl. They’ve been down about three hours, and won’t be up for an hour yet. See that you don’t foul them in your wanderings below. The other man, Jem Hogg—an’ he’s well named—is the laziest chap I ever had to do with. I do believe he sometimes goes to sleep under water!”