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III
AN AFTERNOON OF STORY-TELLING ON THE STEAM-PUMP "DUNDERBERG"

WHEN there is difficult diving to be done in the East River, or in any river where the tide runs strong, you will see the wrecking-boats swing idly at anchor for hours waiting for slack water, the only time when divers dare go down. And often there is half a day's waiting for half an hour's work, and often a week goes by on a two hours' job, say, in full midstream, where not even the most venturesome beginner will stay down more than twenty minutes at the turn, lest he be swept away, ponderous suit and all, by the rush of the river. It's start your patch and leave it to be ripped open by the beating sea; it's get your chain fast nine weary times, and have it nine times torn away over night by some foolish, bumping tug-boat; in fact, it's worry and aggravation until the thing is over.

Also, this is the time of times, if you can get aboard, to make acquaintance with the wreckers, to pick up lore of the diving-suit and tales of the divers.

It was bad weather when we, on the sturdy old Dunderberg, were busy at a wreck off the Brooklyn shore, not far from Grand Street ferry (I had as much to do with lifting this wreck as the pewter spoons stuck around the little cabin). It wasn't much of a wreck anyhow – only a grain-boat – but it had my gratitude for stubbornly refusing to come up. And so we had hours to spend down in the cabin aforesaid, which could barely hold cook-stove and dining-table, but managed to be parlor and bedroom besides; also laundry on occasions. The Dunderberg, I should explain, was originally a mud-scow, but for good conduct and an injury to her nose had been changed into a steam-pump. She could suck her forty tons of coal an hour out of a wreck with the best of them. And she traveled with four pontoons, no one of which could touch her in table fare, especially coffee.

Late one afternoon, when the rain was drizzling and the swinging brass lamps lit, we sat about on wooden stools (and some were curled up in bunks along the walls) and listened to the talk of Atkinson and Timmans and Hansen, who had seen and done strange things in their time.

They were discussing the escape-valve in a diver's helmet, and arguing whether it pays to stiffen the spring for very deep diving. Atkinson, who had worked eight fathoms deeper than either of them, said he left his spring alone; he used the same suit and the same valve action for any depth.

"But I look out for sand-banks," said he, "ever since that fellow – you know who I mean – had one cave in on him in the North River. He was tunneling under a vessel with a wall of sand beside him higher than his head, and the first thing he knew he was flat on his back, with sand jammed in his valve so it couldn't open. It wasn't a minute before he was shot up to the surface like a balloon. The reason of that," he explained for my benefit, "is because a diving-suit with its valve shut gets lighter and lighter as they drive down air from the air-pump, until all of a sudden it comes up, man and all, just as a plank would if you held it on the bottom and then let it go."

"Talking about planks coming up," said Timmans, who was seated under the picture of a prize-fighter, "I was down on the North German Lloyd steamer Main, the one that was burned and sunk, fixing a suction-pipe to pump grain out of her, when a big wooden hatch got loose and came up under me. I was working between decks, and the hatch swung me right up against the overhead beams and held me there, squeezing the life-line and hose so tight I couldn't signal. It's lucky the hose was wire wound, or that would have been the last of me. But I got my air all right, and after a while I worked free."

"Wire wound and all," observed Atkinson, "I've had my hose squeezed so the air was shut off. I was on a wreck off one of the Hoboken docks once, when an eight-inch suction-pipe caught the hose coming down through a hatch, and the next second I felt my air stop, though I could hear the pump beating. I jerked 'slack away' on the life-line, and that loosed the hose and saved me, but I got a blast of compressed air as the jam eased that jumped me up a yard."

"Suppose your life-line had been jammed, too," I asked, "so that you couldn't jerk 'slack away'?"

Atkinson paused to think. "There's a difference of opinion about how long a man can live on the air that's in his helmet. Some say three or four minutes. I don't believe it. I think two minutes would do the business."

"There was George Seaman – " began Timmans.

"Yes," said Atkinson, taking up the story, as was a senior's right, "there was George Seaman, who put trust in the argument of Tom Scott and Low and some of those old-timers, that a man can cut his hose and press his thumb quick against the hole and live long enough on what air's in the helmet to reach the top. Years ago they used to give that talk to us youngsters, but I notice none of 'em ever tried it. Well, Seaman, he did try it; he was down on a wreck somewhere along Sixtieth Street, and his hose got caught in the timbers. The life-line was all right, and he was getting air enough, only when they tried to haul him up he stuck on account of the hose. They tried three times to lift him, and each time he'd come up a few feet and stick, and then they'd have to let him fall back. You can see that's awful discouraging for a man, especially when he's tired and cold. If Seaman had kept his nerve and waited they'd prob'bly have sent another diver down to get him untangled, but he didn't keep his nerve. All he saw was that the hose was caught and he couldn't free it, and they couldn't get him up. It's a lot easier to get rattled at the bottom of a river than up in the air, and Seaman called to mind what he'd heard about stopping the hole with your thumb, and he got out his knife. All divers carry a knife fast to the suit. See, like this." He drew a two-edged knife, a wicked-looking weapon, out of its leathern sheath, and moved his thumb along the edge.

"Then Seaman he felt for the hose, and made ready to cut. His idea was, you see, to slash the hose at one stroke, then jerk on the life-line to be hauled up quick, and keep the hole shut with his thumb while he came up. I can picture him now with his knife on the hose, sort of praying a minute, like a man might with a knife at his throat. That's what it amounted to. Well, he wrote the story of what he did right there on the hose, and wrote it plain. They've got the piece at the office, and they'll show it to you if you ask 'em. Seaman made his cut with about two men's strength; I'll bet not one of you boys could do near as well as he did at cutting a hose through with one stroke. His slash came clear through all but a shaving of rubber, and he tried to cut that with a second stroke; but the knife struck a new place about an inch away, and he slashed her half through there. Then he tried nine times more, and made nine separate cuts at the hose; and there they are to-day, about half an inch apart, each one a little shallower than the one before, and the last two or three only scratches on the outside. That was just as he died, and you can figure out how long it prob'bly took him to make those eleven knife strokes. I suppose there ought to be thirteen, but eleven's what there is. You'll count 'em."

Not only did I count them, these eleven tragic cuts, but I have the piece of hose to this day. The office people gave it to me, and never do I look but with a shiver at this dumb record in diminuendo of agony and sacrifice.

"I suppose that settled the question of stopping a hose with your thumb?" I remarked.

"That's what it did!" said Atkinson.

After this there were more stories. I can't begin to say how many more. Every time a diver goes down, one would say, something new happens to him, something worth telling about. Hansen related an experience of his with a conger eel. Atkinson told how a Dock Department diver named Fairchild was blown to death under forty feet of water when twenty-eight pounds of dynamite he was putting in for blasting went off too soon. Timmans told how he fainted away once, one hundred and five feet down, and another time let the water into his suit by pulling out a helmet lug on a foolish wager. And that reminded Atkinson of the time his gasket (the rubber joint under the collar) was cut through by the slam of an iron ladder, and the air went out "Hooo," and a quick jerk on the life-line was all that saved him. Last of all they told the story of old Captain Conkling and the Holyoke Dam, a story known to every diver. It seems there was a leak in this dam, and the water was rushing through with so strong a suction that it seemed certain death for a diver to go near enough to stop the leak. Yet it was extremely important that the leak be stopped – in fact, the saving of the dam depended on it. So Captain Conkling, who was in charge of the job, induced one of his divers to go down, and reluctantly the man put on his suit, but insisted on having an extra rope, and a very strong one, tied around his waist.

"What's that for?" asked Conkling.

"That's to help get my body out, if the life-line breaks," said the diver.

"Go on and do your work," replied Conkling, who had little use for sentiment.

It happened exactly as the diver feared. He was drawn into the suction of the hole, and when they tried to pull him up both hose and life-line parted, and the man was drowned, but they managed to rescue his body with the heavy line, just as he had planned.

Then Conkling called for another diver, but not a man responded. They said they weren't that kind of fools.

"All right," said the captain, in his businesslike way; "then I'll go down myself and stop that hole." And he called the men to dress him.

At this time Captain Conkling was seventy-five years old, and had retired long since from active diving. But he was as strong as a horse still, and no man had ever questioned his courage.

In vain they tried to dissuade him. "I'll stop that hole," said he, "and I don't want any extra rope, either."

He kept his word. He went down, and he stopped the hole, but it was with his dead body, and to-day somewhere in the Holyoke Dam lie the bones of brave old Captain Conkling, incased in full diving-dress, helmet and hose and life-line, buried in that mass of masonry. No man ever dared go down after his body.

IV
WHEREIN WE MEET SHARKS, ALLIGATORS, AND A VERY TOUGH PROBLEM IN WRECKING

TIMMANS, whom I used to call the student diver, because of his keen observation and capacity for wonder, leaned against the step-ladder that reached down from hatch to cabin on the Dunderberg, and remarked, while the others listened: "I did a queer job of diving once down into the hold of a steamship, a National liner, that lay in her dock, blazing with electric lights, and dry as a bone. Just the same, I needed my suit when I got down into her – in fact, I wouldn't have lasted there very long without air from the pump."

"Some queer cargo?" suggested Atkinson.

"That's it. She was loaded with caustic soda, or whatever they make bleaching-powder of – barrels and barrels of it, with the heads broke in after a storm, and it wasn't good stuff to breathe, I can tell you. First they set men shoveling it out, with sponges in their mouths, against the dust and gases, but one man coughed so hard he tore something in his lungs or head and died. Then they sent for a diver – that was me – and I worked hours down there hoisting and shoveling, like I was at the bottom of the bay, only there was no water to carry the weight. Say, but wasn't that suit heavy, and when I looked out through my helmet-glasses it seemed as if I was digging through a snow-field, with such a terrible dazzle it made my eyes ache to look at it."

"I suppose you don't usually see much under water?" said I.

"Depends on what water it is," answered Timmans.

"All rivers around New York are black as ink twenty feet down," remarked Atkinson.

"I know they are," said Timmans, "but I've seen different rivers. When I was diving off the Kennebec's mouth, five miles southeast of the Seguin light (we were getting up the wreck of the Mary Lee), then, gentlemen, I looked through as beautiful clear water as you could find in a drug-store filter. Why, it reminded me of the West Indies. I could see plainly for, well, certainly seventy-five feet over swaying kelp-weed, eight feet high, with blood-red leaves as big as a barrel, all dotted over with black spots. There were acres and acres of it, swarming with rock-crabs and lobsters and all kinds of fish."

"Any sharks?" said I.

Hansen and Atkinson smiled, for this is a question always put to divers, who usually have to admit that they never even saw a shark. Not so Timmans.

"I had an experience with a shark," he answered gravely, "but it wasn't up in Maine. It was while we were trying to save a three-thousand-ton steamer of the Hamburg-American Packet Company, wrecked on a bar in the Magdalena River, United States of Colombia. I'd been working for days patching her keel, hung on a swinging shelf we'd lowered along her side, and every time I went down I saw swarms of red snappers and butterfish under my shelf, darting after the refuse I'd scrape off her plates; and there were big jewfish, too, and I used to harpoon 'em for the men to eat. In-fact, I about kept our crew supplied with fresh fish that way. Well, on one particular day I noticed a sudden shadow against the light, and there was a shark sure enough; not such an enormous one, but twelve feet long anyhow – big enough to make me uneasy. He swam slowly around me, and then kept perfectly still, looking straight at me with his little wicked eyes. I didn't know what minute he might make a rush, so I caught up a hammer I was working with – it was my only weapon – and struck it against the steamer's iron side as hard as I could. You know a blow like that sounds louder under water than it does in the air, and it frightened the shark so he went off like a flash."

"Perhaps he wasn't hungry," laughed one of the crew.

"Not hungry? I'll tell you how hungry those sharks were. They'd swallow big chunks of pork, sir, nailed and wired to barrel heads, as fast as we could chuck 'em overboard; swallow nails, wire, barrel heads, and all, and then we'd haul 'em in by ropes, that did for fish-lines, only it took twenty or thirty men to do the hauling. And there were plenty of sharks 'round, only they never seemed to tackle a man in the suit."

"Some say it's the fire-light of the valve bubbles that scares sharks off," commented Atkinson. "I don't know what it is, but I know the bubbles shine something wonderful as you watch 'em boiling up out of your helmet."

"Phosphorescence," I suggested, and then went back into the talk for some broken threads.

"How about that steamer you were telling about," I asked; "the one that was wrecked on the bar? Did you save her?"

"I should say we did," replied Timmans, "and I guess the company wished we hadn't; it cost them more money than the job was worth. Why, if I should start telling how we saved that steamer I don't know when I'd get through. It took us eight solid months. Yes, sir, and that meant sixty men to feed and pay wages to – forty in the wrecking-crew and twenty on the tug. Oh, but we did have trouble – trouble all the time, but we had fun, too, especially when some o' these gay Bowery lads we'd picked up got loose on the mainland. Talk about scraps!"

Timmans paused as if for invitations to spin the whole yarn, and these he immediately received.

"Tell about painting the alligator," urged Hansen.

"Oh, that was a bit of foolishness me an' another fellow done. He was a Dutchman, and got me to help him catch an alligator one day. He said he could bring him up North and get a big price for him. Well, we noosed one after a whole lot of chasing in a lagoon, and kept him four or five weeks, but he wouldn't eat, and the boys all gave us the laugh. So the Dutchman got up a scheme to paint him white and put him back in the lagoon. His idea was that this white alligator would scare out all the other alligators, and then we'd capture mebbe twenty or thirty on the banks, and make our fortune."

He paused a moment with a twinkling eye, and Hansen snickered.

"Well, we done it. We painted that alligator white, and put him back in the lagoon, and you can shoot me if those other alligators didn't eat him. Yes, sir; they chewed him clean up before we'd hardly got the ropes off him."

"What did the Dutchman say?" asked Hansen, shaking with mirth.

"He stuck to it his idea was all right, but it was the blamed alligator's fault for being too weak with fasting to fight the ones as weren't painted, and he wanted somebody to help him catch another, but nobody would."

Then Timmans came back to the saving of the wreck, and it really was an amazing story of patience and ingenuity against endless obstacles. I doubt if men from anywhere but America would have carried such a hopeless undertaking through to success. First they rigged up a wire railway from wreck to shore, and slid off a valuable cargo of alpaca, silks, and beer bit by bit along the wire to land (where they conscientiously drank the beer). Then they hitched a hawser to the steamer, and by clever engineering managed to drag her off the bar against the river current; but presently this current, sweeping down from the mountains, grew too swift for the wrecking-tug, and she in turn was dragged down stream against all the strength of her engines, and saw herself threatened with destruction on the bar. Then the captain of the tug, in his peril, ordered the hawser cut, and thirty-nine men of the wrecking-crew were left to their fate on the abandoned wreck. Their adventures alone would make a thrilling chapter, but they were rescued finally from the half-sinking steamer, after she had somehow crossed the bar and wrecked herself anew in the breakers some miles down the coast.

Then weeks passed while the wrecking-crew worked at patching the steamer's holes so that she would float, and every day Timmans went down in his suit and did blacksmith work and carpenter work on her torn plates and beams, in constant danger of being crushed in the deep sand trough she rocked and slid in. Sometimes the whole iron hull, beaten against by the ocean, would go grinding along, breaking down a wall of sand ten feet high, almost as fast as Timmans could walk. And to be caught between her side and that wall would have ended his days forthwith. Diving-suit and man would have been crushed like an egg-shell.

Finally, when she was ready they made fast a sixteen-inch hawser, and put on full steam to pull her off into deep water. Off she came, and all was going well with the towing when a fierce tropical storm came upon them, and the steamer turned broadside to its fury, and the great hawser snapped like a kite-string, and back she went on a coral-reef.

Once more they began at the beginning, and in time had another hawser ready, and tried again. This time the hawser parted by grinding on the beach as they dragged her.

Then, after long delay, they got a sixteen-inch hawser, wound with wire, that would resist the friction of rocks and sand, and all would have happened as they hoped had not a sawfish, sent by the evil power that thwarted them, thrust its jagged weapon through the hawser strands, piercing the wire and severing the big tow-line. The wrecking company still shows the saw of that mischievous fish among its curiosities.

So Timmans's narrative ran on endlessly, with details of how they stopped some fresh leaks with sixty-five barrels of cement, and how they quelled a mutiny and how they finally got the steamer off, and rigged up a patent rudder that steered her over twenty-five hundred miles, until they landed her home, two hundred and fifty-odd days after the expedition started. All going to show the kind of stuff American wreckers are made of.

V
IN WHICH THE AUTHOR PUTS ON A DIVING-SUIT AND GOES DOWN TO A WRECK

ONE day I asked Atkinson, as master diver of the wrecking company, if he would let me go down in his diving-suit; and he said yes very promptly, with an odd little smile, and immediately began telling of people who, on various occasions, had teased to go down, and then had backed out at the critical moment, sometimes at the very last, just as the face-glass was being screwed on. It was a bit disconcerting to me, for Atkinson seemed to imply that I, of course, would be different from such people, and go down like a veteran, whereas I was as yet only thinking of going down!

"There's a wreck on the Hackensack," said he; "it's a coal-barge sunk in twenty feet of water. We'll be pumping her out to-morrow. Come down about noon, and I'll put the suit on you."

Then he told me how to find the place, and spoke as if the thing were settled.

I thought it over that evening, and decided not to go down. It was not worth while to take such a risk; it was a foolish idea. Then I changed my mind: I would go down. I must not miss such a chance; it would give me a better understanding of this strange business; and there was no particular danger in it, only a little discomfort. Then I wavered again, and thought of accidents to divers, and tragedies of diving. What if something went wrong! What if the hose burst or the air-valve stuck! Or suppose I should injure my hearing, in spite of Atkinson's assurance? I looked up a book on diving, and found that certain persons are warned not to try it – full-blooded men, very pale men, men who suffer much from headache, men subject to rheumatism, men with poor hearts or lungs, and others. The list seemed to include everybody, and certainly included me on at least two counts. Nevertheless I kept to my purpose; I would go down.

It was rising tide the next afternoon, an hour before slack water (slack water is the diver's harvest-time), when the crew of the steam-pump Dunderberg gathered on deck to witness my descent and assist in dressing me; for no diver can dress himself. The putting on a diving-suit is like squeezing into an enormous pair of rubber boots reaching up to the chin, and provided with sleeves that clutch the wrists tightly with clinging bands, to keep out the water. Thus incased, you feel as helpless and oppressed as a tightly stuffed sawdust doll, and you stand anxiously while the men put the gasket (a rubber joint) over your shoulders and make it fast with thumb-screws, under a heavy copper collar. Next you step into a pair of thirty-pound iron shoes that are strapped over your rubber feet. And now they lead you to an iron ladder that reaches down from rail to water. You lift your feet somehow over the side, right foot, left foot, and feel around for the ladder-rungs. Then you bend forward on the deck, face down, as a man would lay his neck on the block. This is to let the helpers make fast around your waist the belt that is to sink you presently with its hundred pounds of lead. Under this belt you feel the life-line noose hugging below your arms, a stout rope trailing along the deck, that will follow you to the bottom, and haul you back again safely, let us hope. Beside it trails the precious black hose that brings you air.

Now Atkinson himself lifts the copper helmet with its three goggle-eyes, and prepares to screw it on. The men watch your face sharply; they have seen novices weaken here.

"Want to leave any address?" says Captain Taylor, cheerfully.

I admit, in my own case, that at this moment I felt a very real emotion. I watched two lads at the air-pump wheels as if they were executioners, though both had kind faces, and one was sucking placidly at a clay pipe. I thought how good it was to stay in the sunshine, and not go down under a muddy river in a diving-suit.

"Wait a minute," I cried out, and went over the signals again – three slow jerks on the life-line to come up, and so on.

Now the helmet settles down over my head and jars against the collar. I see a man's hands through the round glasses crisscrossed over with protecting wires; he is screwing the helmet down tight. Now he holds the face-glass before my last little open window. "Go ahead wid de pump," calls a queer voice, and forthwith a sweetish, warmish breath enters the helmet, and I hear the wheeze and groan of the cylinders.

"If you get too much air, pull once on the hose," somebody calls; "if you don't get enough, pull twice." I wonder how I am to know whether I am getting too much or not enough, but there is no time to find out. I have just a moment for one deep breath from the outside, when there is no more "outside" for me; the face-glass has shut it off, and now grimy fingers are turning this glass in its threads, turning it hard, and hands are fussing with hose and life-line, making them fast to lugs on the helmet-face, one on each side, so that the hose drops away under my left arm, and the life-line under my right. Then I feel a sharp tap on my big copper crown, which means I must start down. That is the signal.

I pause a moment to see if I can breathe, and find I can. One step downward, and I feel a tug at my trousers as the air-feed plumps them out. Step by step I enter the water; foot by foot the river rises to my waist, to my shoulders – to my head. With a roar in my ears, and a flash of silver bubbles, I sink beneath the surface; I reach the ladder's end, loose my hold on it, and sink, sink through an amber-colored region, slowly, easily, and land safely (thanks to Atkinson's careful handling) on the barge's deck just outside her combings, and can reach one heavy foot over the depth of her hold, where tons of coal await rescue. A jerk comes on the life-line, and I answer that all is well; indeed, I am pleasantly disappointed, thus far, in my sensations. It is true there is a pressure in my ears, but nothing of consequence (no doubt deeper it would have been different), and I feel rather a sense of exhilaration from my air-supply than any inconvenience. At every breath the whole suit heaves and settles with the lift and fall of my lungs. I carry my armor easily. It seems as if I have no weight at all, yet the scales would give me close to four hundred pounds.

The fact is, though I did not know it, my friends up in the daylight were pumping me down too much air (this in their eager desire to give enough), and I was in danger of becoming more buoyant than is good for a diver; in fact, if the clay-pipe gentleman had turned his wheel just a shade faster I should have traveled up in a rush – four hundred pounds and all. I learned afterward that Atkinson had an experience like this, one day, when a green tender mixed the signals and kept sending down more air every time he got a jerk for less. Atkinson was under a vessel's keel, patching a hole, and he hung on there as long as he could, saying things to himself, while the suit swelled and swelled. Then he let go, and came to the surface so fast that he shot three feet out of the water, and startled the poor tender into dropping his line and taking to his heels.

Needless to say, that sort of thing is quite the reverse of amusing to a diver, who must be raised and lowered slowly (say at the speed of a lazy freight elevator) to escape bad head-pains from changing air-pressure.

I sat down on the deck and took note of things. The golden color of the water was due to the sunshine through it and the mud in it – a fine effect from a mean cause. For two or three feet I could see distinctly enough. I noticed how red my hands were from the squeeze of rubber wrist-bands. I felt the diving-suit over, and found the legs pressed hard against my body with the weight of water. I searched for the hammer and nail they had tied to me, and proceeded to drive the latter into the deck. I knew that divers use tools under water – the hammer, the saw, the crowbar, etc. – almost entirely by sense of feeling, and I wanted to see if I could do so. The thing proved easier than I had expected. I hit the nail on the head nearly every time. Nor did the water resistance matter much; my nail went home, and I was duly pleased. I breathed quicker, after this slight exertion, and recalled Atkinson's words about the great fatigue of work under water.

I stood up again and shuffled to the edge of the wreck. Strange to think that if I stepped off I should fall to the bottom (unless the life-line held me) just as surely as a man might fall to the ground from a housetop. I would not rise as a swimmer does. And then I felt the diver's utter helplessness: he cannot lift himself; he cannot speak; he cannot save himself, except as those lines save him. Let them part, let one of them choke, and he dies instantly.

And now the steady braying of the air-pump beat sounded like cries of distress, and the noise in my ears grew like the roar of a train. All divers below hear this roaring, and it keeps them from any talking one with another: when two are down together, they communicate by taps and jerks, as they do with the tenders above. I bent my head back, and could see a stream of bubbles, large ones, rising, rising from the escape-valve like a ladder of glistening pearls. And clinging to my little windows were myriad tiny bubbles that rose slowly. The old Hackensack was boiling all about me, and I saw how there may well be reason in the belief of some that this ceaseless ebullition from the helmet (often accompanied by a phosphorescent light in the bubbles) is the diver's safeguard against creatures of the deep.

Well, I had had my experience, and all had gone well – a delightful experience, a thing distinctly worth the doing. It was time to feel for the life-line and give the three slow pulls. Where was the ladder now? I was a little uncertain, and understood how easily a diver (even old-timers have this trouble) may lose his bearings. There! one, two, three. And the answer comes straightway down the line – one, two, three. That means I must stand ready; they are about to lift me. Now the rope tightens under my arms, and easily, slowly, I rise, rise, and the golden water pales to silver, the bubbles boil faster, and I come to the surface by the ladder's side and grope again for its rungs. How heavy I have suddenly become without the river to buoy me! This climbing the ladder is the hardest task of all; it is like carrying two men on one's back. Again I bend over the deck, and see hands moving at my windows. A twist, a tug, and off comes the face-glass, with a suck of air. The test is over.