Abram Onderdonk, when he died not long ago, was the oldest deep-sea diver in this country. During forty of the nearly seventy years of his life he was continuously engaged in the pursuit of his calling, and it carried him to nearly every part of the globe. Captain Abe, as his friends called him, counted the swordfish as the gravest danger members of his craft have to fear. This fish, which has a short bony sword almost as strong as steel, protruding from its head, speeds along through the water, charging dead ahead and never veering from its course for anything save a rocky ledge or the iron hull of a steamship. If it strikes a wooden craft, its sword seldom fails to cut clean through the vessel's side. Should a man be attacked by it certain death awaits him. Diver Onderdonk himself never encountered but one of these creatures, and that was a young one whose sword had not yet hardened. He was at work on the deck of a sunken vessel, when he saw the fish coming from a distance, and heading straight toward him. He took a tighter grip upon the ax which he held in his hand, and made ready for attack, but, to his surprise and relief, the fish, never swerving from its course, glided past him out of his guard's range, and a moment later disappeared. Captain Abe often encountered sharks under water, but declared that, as a rule, there is little to be feared from them. A former mate of his named March, however, once had an ugly experience with these creatures. The diver in question was at work in a wreck which had been loaded with live cattle. When she had been at the bottom for a month or so the cattle became light and began rising to the surface. The locality was infested with sharks, which quickly gathered round the hatchway, seizing the carcasses as they came out and following them to the surface. Some of the cattle had been tied, and these floating out to their ropes' end, were torn to pieces by the sharks, which soon began to fight among themselves, with the diver an unwilling witness to their struggles. March, hesitating to ascend for fear he might be attacked, and afraid to remain below lest the snap of a shark's mouth should sever his air hose, in the end gave the signal to be hauled up, and the next instant was jerked into and through the school of sharks. He came out of the water maimed for life, as in his upward passage a shark snapped at him and took off his right hand, thus rendering him incapable of further service as a diver.