Meanwhile the diver's assistants were trying to discover what had happened to him. It seemed to them that the signal to haul up had been instantly followed by one to lower, and then by one to stop. The men at the life-line, confused at these apparently contradictory commands, ordered the derrick to haul on the blocks. Nothing yielded to the strain, and the men at the pumps labored until they were exhausted, and had to give way to others, but still no signs of release. A new danger now threatened the imprisoned man. In catching hold of some iron bolts he had cut a small hole in the valve of one of his rubber gloves, and water, filling the glove, was slowly oozing past the clamps at the wrist, and creeping up the arm. It seemed to the helpless diver, held fast in the tide-swept mass, that he would soon be strangled or crushed to death. Confused by the great air pressure in his helmet, he had about concluded that his end had come, when--unlooked for relief--the wreckage gave a lurch, and he found that he could climb up to one of the deck timbers. He grasped his ax, and was hewing desperately for freedom, when suddenly the whole mass broke away, and began to rise rapidly, carrying the diver, now head downward, with it. His queer ascent did not consume more than ten seconds, but it was long enough for him to live over in memory all the events of a lifetime of two-score years. At first his comrades failed to discover him in the mass of tangled material, and their surprise can be imagined when he shot up through the wreckage, feet first. Captain Smith described this as his closest call to death's door, "and" he added, "I have peeped through the keyhole pretty often."