or, a worse enemy than the subtle Greek's, death from the suspended air-current. Speed, nimbleness, strength and activity were worthless: with tedious fingers he must follow the life-line, find its entanglements and slowly loosen them, carefully taking up the slack, and so follow the straightened cord to the door. Then the chest: he must not forget that. Slowly he heaves and pushes, now at this, now at the life-line hitching on knob, handle, lever or projecting peg--on anything or nothing in that maze of machinery; by involution and evolution, like the unknown quantity in a cubic equation, through all the twists, turns, assumptions and substitutions, and always with that unmanageable, indivisible coefficient the box, until he reaches the upper air. In Aesop's fable, when the crane claimed the reward of the wolf for using his long neck and bill as a forceps in extracting a bone from the latter's oesophagus, Lupus suggests that for the crane to have had his head down in the lupine throat and _not_ get it snapped off was reward enough for any reasonable fowl. The petty officer was sufficiently learned in the Lyceum to administer a like return. The stipulated salvage was never paid or offered.[A] [Footnote A: It was a warrant-officer of the Milwaukee: I do not wish to be more definite; but the money (fifty dollars) may be sent to the editor of this Magazine, who will forward it to the diver.] The monitors had small square hatches or man-ports let into the deck, admitting one person conveniently. Hinc via, Tartanii quae fert Acherontis ad undas.