“That’ll do me no harm,” growled Edgar, stooping to catch hold of the air-tube, and making an excuse for sidling and backing towards his seat.

“Oh! What a fright! And such a figure!” exclaimed Lintie; “come round, let us try to get a nearer view of him.”

She dragged the laughing Aileen with her, for she was an impulsive little woman; but at whatever opening in the crowd she and her friend presented themselves, they were sure to find the diver’s ridiculously broad and now inelegant back turned towards them.

“Plague on him!” she exclaimed, for she was an impatient little woman, just then, “I don’t believe he’s got a front at all! Come round again—quick.”

“Why, what are you turning about like that for?” exclaimed one of the exasperated attendants, who stood ready with the helmet.

“His head’s turned wi’ fear, an’ he’s a-follerin’ of it,” growled the boatswain.

“Why don’t you sit down?” said the attendant.

“Are you ready?” asked Edgar, in a low gruff voice.

“Of course I am—don’t you see me?”

Another happy idea came into Edgar’s head at that moment. He pulled his red night-cap well down over his eyes, and sat down with a crash, while another hearty laugh greeted his supposed eccentricity.

“Hallo, I say, you’re not going to be hanged—no need to draw it down like that,” said the first officer.

“Drowning comes much to the same thing; let’s do it decently—according to rule,” retorted Edgar, with a grin that displayed a brilliant set of teeth.

“H’m! We shan’t see him now,” whispered Lintie, in disappointment, forcing her way once more to the front.

This time there was no reply from Aileen, for a strange shock passed through her as she observed the momentary smile—and no wonder, for many a time had that same mouth smiled upon her with winning tenderness.

Of course she did not for a moment suspect the truth, but she thought it strange, nevertheless, that the diver’s mouth should have such a strong resemblance to—she knew not precisely what! Afterwards she confided to Lintie that it had struck her as bearing a faint—very faint—resemblance to the mouth of a friend.

“Of a very particular friend?” inquired Lintie, who was sharp-witted.

Aileen blushed and hid her face on the neck of her friend, and suddenly poured out her soul, which the other drank up with avidity.

That same night, lying in her berth, which was a top one, and looking languidly over the side at her friend, who lay in the berth below looking sympathetically up, she revealed her hopes and fears and sentiments, to the edification, (it is to be hoped) of a mean-spirited passenger in the saloon, who stood on the other side of the very thin partition, and tried to overhear. If he succeeded it must have been a new sensation to him to listen to the gentle streams of hope and love that flowed through to him—for Aileen’s thoughts were gems, as pure and beautiful as the casket which contained them. We are not quite sure, but we more than half suspect that if his presence there had been discovered, and himself had been within easy reach, the casket’s palm would have evoked something resembling a pistol-shot from his dirty cheek!

But to return to our diver. The moment his helmet was on he breathed freely, recovered his equanimity, and went down the rope-ladder that hung over the side, with an air of easy decision that checked the criticisms of the men and aroused the admiration—not to mention the alarm—of the women.

“The puir felly’ll be droon’d,” pitifully observed a fore-cabin passenger from Edinburgh, as she gazed at the mass of air-bubbles that arose when Edgar’s iron head had disappeared.

“Nothink of the sort,” responded a fore-cabin passenger from London, who had taken an immense liking to the fore-cabin passenger from Edinburgh, in virtue of their total mental, moral, and physical dissimilarity; “divers are never drownded.”

We need scarcely observe to the intelligent reader that both females were wrong—as such females, in regard to such mat............