‘I presume your divers are not so expert as mine—that is what I say,’ answered the little man, coolly enough. At this Blue Peter fired up. ‘I say—dere are no coffers or treasure at all dere!’ exclaimed the Indian: ‘and Massa Captain Jem here believe Blue Peter, who never told him a lie—oh, never, not at all.’ ‘Yes, Blue Peter, I do believe you,’ replied Captain Jem; ‘and if the prisoner here be dealing falsely with us, on his own head be the peril.’ This was the first time that the Captain had called Bedloe the ‘prisoner,’ and the little man started at the phrase, very perceptibly, but he only said— ‘I tell you what my Indians told me; and one of them brought up an ingot of silver to prove that his words were true.’ I was, meanwhile, musing whether I should not try a dive myself. I remembered that I had been tolerably expert at the exercise, when a boy, and so, stripping and buckling a hand-lead to my loins, as I had seen the Indians do to aid their descent, I plunged overboard into the tepid sea, and grasping the rope, found that I descended rapidly and easily, and that the water was so transparent, that I saw above me the keels of the boats, and below me the form of the cast-away ship, as clearly as though I gazed upon them through the gloaming of a Scottish summer’s evening. It was a curious sensation, that of clinging to the rope in the mid sea, with the water like a mass of thick green air, wavering and gurgling about me, and the indistinctly-seen forms of fishes gliding hither and thither, like little opaque phantoms,—and as strange was the feeling when I placed my foot, as though my body had no weight, upon the slimy deck, and felt the feathery sea-weed rise upwards at the pressure, and cling and wave about my legs. All this, of course, passed in a moment, and in the next I had descended through the after-hatchway, and steadying myself with my feet upon the lump of pig-iron, I had time to cast a hurried, but observant glance around me. A considerable portion of the deck had been torn away, or broken up, by the fall of the pig-iron, and down the aperture came a dull greenish light, showing the dim outline of great ribs of wood, and masses of timber-work, bulged and broken, with fragments of the rock projecting, here and there, through the crushed and splintered masses. Around me lay piled up rotting casks, and the fragments of bulkheads, and the smouldering remains of furniture. I saw the holes where doors had led from cabin to cabin, sea-weed came waving through them. Shell-fish clung in clusters to what had been the rudder-case, and to rusty iron-work, which as I moved, upon the rotting wood and hemp, hurt my feet. Sprawling along the wreck, and rousing slimy fish from their lurking-places, I made my way to where I saw the sheen of glimmering metal, and presently I clutched what was the brass box of a compass. Then throwing off my leaden sinker, I burst my way out of a