Gales of a Deep-Sea Diver.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXIX, Issue XXII, 29 November 1902, Page 1353

Gales of a Deep-Sea Diver.

By

ARTHUR E. McFARLANE.

It was a bright, sunshiny afternoon, and the old diver was sitting dangling his heels over the end of the wharf. He had been serenely silent for some time, when a boatload of young men pulled by singing and shouting in maudlin fashion. One of them noticed him. and shouted, “Have a drink, old hoss!” The philosopher of the under-sea sniffed with as much irritation as his equable nature could display, and he muttered, half to himself, “You’ll get your drink, young man, if you and your friends are not more careful with that dingey—and it will be a longer drink than you're reckoning on, too!” He followed the boat with frowning eyes until it disappeared behind the long dock. Then he again broke silence: “A man can’t drink and get far. diving. There may be businesses where the chap who takes more than is good for him is just the sort they’re looking for, although I haven’t yet happened on any such myself • The big bankers and railroad presidents and steamship-owners, for all I know, may feel like putting- up notices in their offices: “ ‘lf you want to succeed with us, take a day off once a week and get drunk!’ Maybe they feel that way about it, and maybe, they don’t. But I know just this: you can't drink and dive. “They say marrying always finds out the weakest side of a man, and the same is true of the deep sea. A pressure of 20 or 25 pounds, let alone one of 50 or 60, goes feeling over a man like an insurance doctor; and sure as death it’ll put its finger on that link in the chain of his make-up that's going to be the first to break —and often enough it’ll break it, too. “If you haven't a sound heart and lungs, if you’ve, been sunstruck or have had your brain affected in any way, you can't go down safely. But. above all—both for his own sake, and for the sake of his fellow-divers, too ■ —a drinker can’t afford to try it—and for a lot of good reasons. “I don't need to say anything of the plain likelihood of a muddleheaded man getting his valves out of kilter, or giving the wrong signals, or tangling- himself in his lines and hoisting- tackle. But take the matter of the effect of pressure alone. Deep water acts on a good many of the clearest-headed men exactly like laughing-gas, and when a man's brain is afume with spirits to begin with, it makes a fool of him in no time. “Whatever state of mind he’s in is exaggerated tenfold; and whether he almost laughs his head off or wants to do murder is only a matter of how much he’s been drinking, and accordingly how he’s feeling when he g-oes down. If he’s in an ugly temper to start with, the fact that he's soon making a fool of himself under sea—circling- round a mast till he’s tied himself like a calf to a tree, or going down one hatch and trying to come up another, or getting hooked to his own derrick cable and being pulled up like a cork on a fishing-line—isn't going to make him any pleasanter to work with. “Most likely before he’s through with his spree he'll go clean bloodmad and run amuck on his diving partners. That's what happened with me once, and I was as near done for as I want to be. If I've been giving you a temperance lecture, I've good personal reasons for it. “ The man's name was Feally, and he was a big, swarthy giant of a fellow. The job we met on was a simple enough one, getting the cargo out of a schooner that had foundered in five or six fathoms; and the boss had left Feally and me to work ahead with no one above her but our tenders, the derricks-hands and the engineer. " '**'

“Well, I don't know how he got i'., but the second day after we were left alone Feally showed that he had liquor with him. Now. if it was anyone’s business to speak to him, it was mine, for I was senior in the gang. But when a roan’s working alongside of you and drawing pretty near the same pay, you don’t feel like venturing to stand up against a mast and preach him sermons; so 1 didn't say anything. “Besides, when we were up on the tug, there was really nothing to betray him but his breath. I found it awkward to say to him, ‘ Feally, you've been drinking, for when I get close enough to you I can smell it.’ I’d have seemed to him like the worst sort of meddler. “ But once we were down—oh, there wasn't any need to get close to him for evidence then! For the pressure, even at five fathoms, just brought it. out all over. For the first few' days, when he wasn’t taking much, it only made hi in funny. He wanted to liven things up by larking. He’d keep trying to trip me. or he'd hit me a whack on the top of the helmet every chance he got, or try to leap-frog over me, or play pranks with my lines. 1 could fancy I heard hie silly laugh at every luny trick. “ As for his work, his hoisting cable wasn’t half ‘fed.’ He didn’t send up cne case to my two. But the derrick men, even if it had been their business to concern themselves about it, couldn’t know that he wasn’t doing what he ought to. For when you’re lifting out a cargo, sometimes it will take you as long a time over one ease as it will over the next ten. So Ft ally went on his way pretty much untroubled. “ But one day, though, about the end of the week, I thought the end

of his work on that job had come, for without any warning one afternoon the boss came out to us. Feally had just been hauled up. and by rights needed an hour’s rest; but h s tenders, who were really kind-heart-ed ehaps, seeing that he was a good deal worse than usual that day, were nervous lest the boss should notice the state he was in if he stayed up above; and, crowding hint back into his suit, they sent him down again as quick as they could. “I wondered at his returning from his * off spell ’ so soon, and particularly because he wasn’t funny any longer. He kept fumbling at the hook of his cable—he was past being able to do anything for himself—and looking at me kind of appealing. But as I knew that he was drunk, and knew that he was well aware of it, too, I didn’t feel called upon to go out of my way any on his behalf. “But when, after half an hour or so I went up for my own rest spell and found the boss there, that opened my eyes. And, furthermore, when the boss remarked that Feally seemed to be having a difficult, grip to make and needed help, I answered up—pretty ambiguous, I own—• th'at he did need help, and I was going back to give it. to him right away. The boss would have given him his time in a minute if he’d found out he’d been drinking; and except for that Feally wasn’t such a bad sort. “So I got back down io him the quickest 1 knew how, and for the. next hour I did his work as well as my own. I made fast his tackle, gave his signals and all, and it kept me busy. But I couldn’t do anything else, for he didn't seem to have cither sense or strength in him—only stumbled about and got in my way. “Fortunately, when we had to come up at last, —and we were both well-t uckeied by the long siege we’d had of it, —the boss was gone. He’d made remarks to the derrick-hands about our slowness, though, and that made me mad, for I had a fairly good conscience in the business. I turned loose on Feally, and told him if he touched liquor again that trip one of us would quit the job, and I didn’t intend it should be me. “He was humble enough, and pro-

raised all aorta of reform —was going • > take the pledge as soon as he got *1 shore, and what not besides. He kept to it for about a week, and then there came a day that put an end to his diving career in that neighbourhood, and almost finished mine for gcodl “ I don’t know why I was fool enough to go down with him that afternoon. Anyone could see that he’d been making up for the weeic ne’d gone dry. His tenners certainly were not slow to notice it; but being an easy-going, irresponsible lot, they took it only as a better joke than usual, and made all sorts of fun of him. * Would he take his pipe with him? ’ * Did he want his air-hose screwed on, or would he go without? ’ ‘And—as we were taking down hammer and nails to do some bracing between decks —hadn’t he better carry the nails in his mouth, and take the hammer to break his faceplate when he wanted to use them?’ Be made no answer to any of their nonsense, only shuffled his feet and looked sullen and ugly; but what they said stuck in his mind, as you’ll set, later. “I went down first, and a few minutes afterward I saw his legs coining through the hatch. Halfway to the bottom he slipped and went plunging down on the lumber we’d piled there. But the tumble sobered him so little that he put his hand up to his helmet to feel for the bumpl Although I was angry with him, I couldn’t help grinning at that; and when, after two or three tries, he got to his feet again and started to drive nails, I burst into a roar in spite of myself. "You see, the way light is slanted in the water keeps things below the surface from being where they really ought to be; it’s so hard to get any proper force with the hammer that in ordinary simple fairness the nails ought to act straight, and right, but they don’t. An old diver, though, uses his hammer by instinct. He can nail as well with his eyes shut as open. Consciously or unconsciously, he makes his calculation with every blow. ‘‘But with the liquor in, all Feally’s instinct for nail-driving was well out; and when he’d make three wide misses—he stood directly in the hatchway light, and I could see him plainly—and had got wrathier and wrathier at every whack, the fourth time he made a full-arm swing, like a crazy man with a sledge, and mashed his left-hand fingers flatter than a rivet-head. “I stood laughing right then, and started over to see if I could help him any. Well, he just caught up his hammer again, and gave it to me with all his strength square on my head-piece. “For one dazed jiffy I thought he’d gashed my helmet, but he hadn't. Bruising my shoulder along the line of the collar was all the harm he’d done; and as soon as I was sure of that. I took hold of him, pressed my face-plate close to his—which is the only way divers can make each other hear —and told him he’d better get out of water till his hand was fixed and he was sobered up. “For answer he grabbed me about the body, and swore he’d go up in his own good time, and before he went he was going to do for me. The whisky inside him and the pressure outside to treble the effect of it were working with a vengeance; he was a long way past the funny stage now. “I shouted back at him not to be a drunken idiot, and tried o wrench myself free. But he had wice my strength, and held me e: ily. We wrestled and strained foi a good five minutes. From being < ily exasperated, I began to be ner ous and anxious; and I own it was soon worse than that with me. ‘"The ’tween decks of a foundered ship is a gloomy enough place at beat, and fighting a madman didn’t add to its cheerfulness. And Feally, as he gradually worked himself into a frenzy, made it worse by shoving his helmet against mine every few minutes, and yelling that I’d see whose face-plate would be ■mashed with the hammer, and whose mouth would be filled with

nails. His volee came to me roaring and bellowing like a wild beast’s, and his face glared through his open-mouthed and distorted. “I hadn’t long to wait to see that he was in deadly earnest about smashing my plate, for as so m as he had his right arm free for a minute, he struck at me again The blow went high an inch or two, or my suit would have been full of water in twenty seconds. “I made a desperate twist and clutched for the life-line. But dropping the hammer, he had me by tbe wrist with one sweep, and pinned my arms by my side again. And indeed, as our tenders had known, we’d be circulating around considerable, and had given us yards of slack to draw the line taut and signa! in the second would have been impossible, anyway. “For a minute we stood there at a deadlock, both of us breathing hard, and I tightening my muscles and wondering what his next crazy move would be. I found out almost before I could think what he was at. His grip dropped from my waist to my legs, and in a trice he’d lifted me off my balance. I had just presence of mind enough to fling my arms up around my face as I went down. “I knew what was coming then. What he couldn’t do with the hammer he was going to try to do wi;h his lead-soled boots. And in spite of the resistance of the water, and the difficulty he had in keeping himself balanced, his kicks were brutally hard ones. “Every time my wrists were struck I thought the bones were broken in a new place; but some way or other I kept my face-plate covered and flattened myself on the floor. “After his fifth or sixth try had come to nothing he stopped. 1 thought that perhaps the madness was beginning to work itself out. Instead of that, it was only making him slyer and more calculating, for, suddenly bending over, he tried to hold my arms down and use his boot while my glass had no protection. But he couldn’t stoop and kick at the same time, and after a stubborn struggle, he stopped once more and drew off. “Although I was in mortal fear lest he’d think of the knife I had under my belt —it was my salvation that he didn’t carry one himself— I dared to hope again, and peered out from under my hands. He was giving my slack a turn around the nearest stanchion! “I think the cool deliberation of the brute maddened me. An. way, as he came back, I let all caution go, and flung my arms around his ankles. It was the wisest thing I could have done, for it took him unawares, and I had the purchase of the under man, too. Using all the shoulder strength I had, I shot him head first over my back. In the water a diver weighs only a few pounds. He went easily, and he went a long way. “I snatched at my line—fortunately for me its thickness had kept it from drawing too tight about the stanchion—and started up the ladder. Bpt I had no more than had my head out of the hatch than I felt Feally’# grip on my hose again. “I had only a moment to think, but the first thought to come was the right one. I was already pretty full of air, and if free from my eighty pounds of leaded belt I’d go to the top like a bubble. I braced my back against the hatchway and tore at the belt buckle; my knife 1 whipped loose as the weights dropped from me. “In a jiffy I was half upside down, and pulling at Feally like a balloon. Then I took the risk, a diver’s last resort, and slashed at the hose. The cut went through clean. I closed my thumb over the end in the same second, and in one big rush of bubbles went straight up. Two minutes later my tenders were unscrewing my face-plate. I told them between gasps to haul up Feally, and then lay back completely played. "Feally left that day. He didn’t give any reasons, and as for me. I didn’t go into any unnecessary explanations. He came to his end finally when diving in Port Elizabeth;

and although it was hushed up, enough leaked out to tell what had been his undoing. Well, it’s every man’s privilege to follow his own theories of what’s wise and what’s foolish. I 'il this is a long way past being a theory: You can’t mix drink and the ‘under sea.’ ”