"'And the sea shall give up its treasures'," she quoted softly to herself as she watched.
The next moment her hands made an involuntary movement in the water. Had she been on land her gesture would have meant that she was fighting for breath. To her horror she realized that she was slowly suffocating. Something must have happened to her air-pump above the water. She was not faint from any other cause, but was getting an insufficient supply of fresh air.
At this moment Madge proved her mettle. She remembered Captain Jules's injunction, "Keep a clear head under the water and there is nothing to fear." She knew the signal for more fresh air, and gave two hard, quick pulls on her life line. Then she waited. Relief would surely come in a moment.
For the first and only time since their descent to the bottom of the bay Captain Jules had temporarily neglected Madge. He certainly had not expected to find any pearls in so unlikely a place as Delaware Bay; yet the shells he held in his hand were most unusual. The thrill of his old occupation seized hold of the pearl fisher. His big hands fairly trembled with emotion. He felt, rather than saw, Madge jerk her life line twice, but it never dawned on him that her signal for more air might fail to be answered.
Madge signaled again. A loud buzzing seemed to sound in her ears. Her tongue felt thick and swollen. She could not see a foot ahead of her. All the dazzling, shimmering beauty of the world under the water had passed into blackness. The little captain's eyes were glazing behind the glass windows of her helmet. She felt that she must be dying. But she had strength to give one more signal. Air! air! How could she ever have believed that there was anything in the world so precious as fresh air? Madge had a vision of a field of new-mown hay in her old home at "Forest House." The wind was blowing through it with a delicious fragrance. Had she the strength to pull her life line once again? The water that she loved so dearly was to claim her at last. She made a motion to go toward Captain Jules, but she had no control of her limbs.
Then Captain Jules became aroused to action. He realized that Madge had signaled for air, not once, but several times. This meant that her signal had not been answered. The captain had been for too many years a deep-sea diver not to guess instantly the girl's condition. The groan inside his helmet came from the bottom of his heart. Captain Jules's hands shook. He dropped the shells that he believed might contain priceless pearls down into the soft sand in the bed of the bay.