Girvan was by no means inclined to relinquish the cannon, and further remonstrances were followed up by blows. The divers began a rough and tumble fight at the bottom of the sea, striking at each other savagely with their fists. They were by no means equally matched, for Jones was much the smaller man of the two. Realizing that the encounter might cost him his life, he took the first opportunity of trying to get to the surface. Reaching the shot-rope, he went up it about 5 or 6 feet, closely pursued by Girvan who, grabbing his legs, did his utmost to pull him down again. The divers fought desperately in their rage, Jones to get away from those clutching hands that gripped his legs, Girvan to drag him to the seabed again, and that dramatic fight reached its climax in the greatest disaster that can overtake a diver. The glass of Girvan’s helmet was smashed by a blow, and as the water swept in it seemed that his end was nigh. Luckily, however, the men on the surface, unable to explain the violent agitation of the lines and feeling that something serious must be wrong, dragged both men to the top. Girvan’s smashed helmet told its own tale and set them working frantically to pull him round. He was at his last gasp. Another minute and they would have been too late. He was removed to hospital, where his splendid physique, coupled with excellent nursing, enabled him to pull round. Those two divers who fought that strange fight at the bottom of the Solent came to the conclusion that it did not pay for divers to disagree, so they ended their differences by becoming the staunchest of friends. Other attendants in tropic waters, feeling a strange dragging at the lines, have also drawn the divers to the surface without loss of time, to find them in the clutches of the deadly octopus, whose horrible tentacles have been coiling round the divers, striving to draw them within reach of the deadly beak that would go through the rubber diving dress as though it were paper. There, on the deck of the diving vessel, they have had to fight desperately to free the divers from the grip of the loathsome creature, only succeeding in the end by chopping and hacking away the encircling tentacles. As recently as the spring of 1924, when I happened to be in the South of France, a diver at Marseilles had to be rescued from an octopus in this thrilling manner. The octopus, or squid, is, indeed, the greatest danger that the diver has to face beneath the surface of the sea so far as the denizens of the deep are concerned. Those squids occasionally found round the British coast are too small to threaten the diver, but in warmer waters, where the squid attains a huge size, he will rapidly attack any unlucky diver who unconsciously ventures too near his deep-sea lair.