BIG Harkinson stepped off the raft and disappeared downward. The gray-green water lapped above his head, a few blister-like bubbles danced and exploded in the tiny swirl that marked his exit. That was all. The sepulchered Helena was about to receive a second visitor from the land of the living. The slender conduit that linked the diver with life paid out rapidly, then suddenly stopped, and we knew that Harkinson was aboard the wreck.

      "Seventy-one feet," drawled Garrick.

      "A little pale, wasn't he?" queried Wenry, keeping a watchful eve on the line.

      Garrick looked over to the speaker as though he had expected the question.

      "What d'you s'pose is wrong?" he said. The faintest trace of anxiety was in his great, slow voice.

      "It's Connors — I mean the mysterious way Connors's air-tube parted," returned Wenry. "I don't believe in spooks, 'specially submarine ones; but there ain't no more cause for the Atlantic cable coming in two at this minute than there was for poor Connors's hose — a brand-new one, too, mind you — separatin' as it did. It's queer."

      Garrick, listening, spat reflectively at the last remaining bubble. Watching from my seat in the dingey, I knew that the two men, whatever denials they might make, were at last impressed with the gruesomeness of their chosen profession — dallying with dead things under the sea. Mayhap it was because Connors had been their tutor, their companion. Indeed, the old diver had been pretty nearly everything to them; but he had been even more to his employers. In his unaccountable death the world had lost a master-diver, and the company had lost money. But because John Connors had been a faithful servant, the company had paid hard money that the old diver's harness-weighted remains might be the first brought up.

      Harkinson's signal "up" was of that nervous, hurry-up sort that tells of sudden distress. He had been down but three minutes. At a similar depth he usually remained thirty or more, for he was a Hercules, and for him water-pressure had no terrors. I knew that Wenry, at least — though for no good reason — fully expected to see the big diver come up limp and dead. I read his white face like print. But when big Harkinson's helmet bobbed out of water a moment later, both his big red hands were clutching at the raft as frantically as if some pursuing monster were about to drag him down to death.

      When his helmet was off, his face showed mottled and chalky. He spluttered out meaningless fragments of speech, and his eyes were fixed in a terrified stare. Garrick forced half a pint of whisky down his throat before anything like coherency could be restored.

      "He's down there — boys — Connors!" The diver clapped his hands over his eyes as if to shut out some hideous recurring vision. "Oh, Lord!" he wailed, "think — think of him down there — walking around in the harness — Connors, dead sixty — sixty hours — walking and beckoning —"

      Harkinson's great strength snapped like a reed under the strain, and he dropped forward upon his face, unconscious.

      When Garrick consented to go down to the Helena, I knew that it was because he needed money — needed it badly. Garrick, unavoidably, had long been idle: besides, he was engaged, and the girl was pretty and worthy; and the big, slow-spoken diver knew that he must prepare a suitable home for her. He was of a good, honest sort, was Garrick, and courageous, too. But I had watched his face as Harkinson, his nerves shattered, related from a sick-bed his uncanny experience aboard the sunken Helena; and thus I had come to know that, badly as Garrick needed money, he needed Courage more, if he would succeed where Harkinson had failed. The thing was on his nerves, right enough; but I saw the grip of his big jaw, and I knew that he was indeed going down, even though he might not come up.

      "There was a lot of wreckage piled up about the cabin-door," Harkinson had told us, "and I had to squat as low as I could to pass under it. As I raised up, inside the cabin — Connors — dead sixty hours — got up off a bench fixed to the opposite wall of the cabin, and came to meet me. Seventy-one feet under the sea with a ghost! Connors — yes, it was him, all right — suddenly stopped and threw up his hands as though recognition of me startled him. He wore his same diver's outfit — the kind we all use. After a moment his arms fell limply by his sides; but immediately he made a hand and passed it over his brow perplexedly. Then he seemed to gesture to me: and I found that I was also beckoning to him, signaling to him to follow me up. But he backed away in a manner almost of despair, I thought, and resumed his bench at the farther side of the cabin as I bent low under the wreckage at the door and backed out on deck, signaling to be pulled up."
 

II.

      WENRY'S face was chalk-white, as big Garrick went over the side and dropped out of sight in the green swell that rocked our raft and dingey. As for me, I confess my nerves were strangely shaken. But I was scarcely more than a green diver as yet, whereas Wenry thrilled his listeners — and himself — with well-told tales of raised treasures and strange submarine encounters in which, be it known, he spared himself little of the commendation due such achievements.

      Within twelve minutes after Garrick went down, the body of Connors had been recovered in a fair state of preservation. Harkinson, an old-timer, too, had after all allowed himself to be frightened off the job by some fool, subaqueous phenomenon whose phases he had been studying all his precious life.

      Wenry's superstitious mind was infinitely relieved. A semblance of color came back into his face, and I had begun to feel less of the anxiety experienced by one at work with a near-maniac for a companion, when all at once Garrick startled, us with a fiercely tugged "up" signal. He was mumbling strange sounds before we got his helmet off, and when the light fell on his face it revealed a mask of terror unspeakable. His features were drawn and seamed unbelievably, and speech had deserted him altogether. Some awful emotion shook his great body like an aspen.

      It was two long hours before we knew his story. All that Harkinson had seen in the Helena's cabin, Garrick, too, had beheld — the same in all its blood-chilling details.

      The affair began to nag my nerves with a vengeance. I would have staked my very existence on the grip of Garrick's big jaw. I almost wished that I had done so; for Wenry and I were the only availables now, and I knew beforehand that Wenry, if detailed, would refuse to go down. It was a time when one must be a man or a mouse; when a white feather becomes a white flag, and a white flag means the surrendering of, a career. I am a natural coward, but possess underlying qualities of resolution. "I could live without this job," I thought; and, too, I, unlike Garrick, was blessed with no woman's love save a mother's; but her comforts were my pleasures, her self-denials my heartaches. I went down!

      I went down — down, down, down until my cumbrous feet met the slimy, slanting deck of the ill-fated Helena. The water was as clear as might be at a like depth. Everywhere was a confusion of wreckage. It had been a smashing gale that wrought all this demolition. I made out the cabin, half-hidden under a tangled mass of wreckage, and worked my way to the débris-barred door. I avoided the keen edge of a long knife which some whim of the storm's fury had fixed firmly in a piece of broken mast. The edge turned outward, menacing my lines, and I gasped. The mystery of Connors's death was laid bare. His hose had doubtless caught on the knife-blade; he had tried to haul it after him, and —!

      I had to crouch low to pass under the barrier at the door. The cabin windows were clear, and in the ceiling was a huge, spar-torn hole which admitted light. I stood erect inside the cabin, and —! At the opposite side of the room a second diver in full dress had risen from a sitting posture, and now stood before me, motionless, but erect with the confident poise of life. A nervous, insane curiosity seized me; a yearning to know if the diver that faced me were of flesh and blood, or — or something else. I advanced toward the apparition; and then my nerve all but broke, for it followed my example and came forward to meet me! I hesitated only for the space of a heart-beat; then I threw myself forward wildly, hands clutching, but on the greasy, slime-coated floor my feet flew from under me with the effort, and I crashed down.

      The fall dazed me. I only knew that my hands, in the instant of my falling, had slipped over a smooth, hard surface exactly where the apparition had stood. From the floor I strained my eyes upward. The strange diver had disappeared. I tottered to my feet; and then the desperation of fright sent my hand to my sheath-knife, for as I gained my feet the vanished figure again confronted me. I drove the knife with all my strength, for I knew that the mysterious diver was not Connors. The knife-point deflected and grazed an impenetrable, even surface, and the force of the blow carried me with a momentary shock against something that felt peculiarly like a sleek, enameled panel. My tense nerves went slack, and my knees swayed weakly from the sudden relaxation as the light of understanding broke upon my groping senses.

      "The deuce!" I ejaculated in the close confinement of my helmet, "a mirror!"

(THE END)