in the blood caused by prolonged exposure to high airpressure. The first is prevented by increasing the supply of air in proportion to the depth by means of steam air-compressors of sufficient capacity. Nitrogen bubbles are more difficult to deal with, and unless eliminated will cause paralysis and death. The worst of the evil effects are got rid of by bringing a diver up in stages, with intervals for rest. At the depth of the Laurentic the men worked in 30-minute shifts, and took 33 minutes to ascend, the longest rest of a quarter of an hour being at ten feet from the surface. Even then the divers frequently suffered from what are called "bends," severe pains in the joints, and were then put into a recompression chamber in the diving vessel, and gradually made accustomed to normal air-pressure. During the work on the Laurentic Damant often went down himself, knew exactly what his men had to do and how they suffered in doing it, and so completely won their affection and confidence that recovering divers would insist on coming out of the recompression chamber, and enduring the return of those horrible "bends," to make room for him rather than that their skipper should linger in pain outside.

So the long work of cutting down through the wreck began. The tangled structure had to be removed beam by beam and plate by plate by men

not extend beyond three or four yards, and whose every movement had to be communicated by telephone to those above. The masses of metal were cut by explosives, and when detached were hoisted to the surface for ultimate dumping at a distance. Cutting metal beams by explosives is an art in itself, and Damant explains how it was done. A charge on one side only bends a beam; two charges directly opposite one another produce no effect; but if two opposing charges are stepped a little so as to give a sheering stress upon explosion, the beam is neatly severed every time. Day after day through April and May this picking to pieces of the wreck went on until a crater had been driven nearly to the bottom, and then on 22nd May the divers came upon a pocket of gold bars separated from their cases. They secured twenty-two that day, worth about £37,000, more than enough to pay the whole working costs of the salvage party for a season! This was most encouraging; it showed that the searchers were on the right road. On many days in June gold was found in smaller quantities, and then on 20th June came a bumper day, which Damant permits himself in his diary to underline heavily and describe as "splendid." The divers struck a rich lode, and four of them in successive shifts found and sent up no less than 224 bars (value £380,000). One

109, while another man raised no more than three. This shows how much luck there was about the game. By a very wise regulation the men engaged on the under-water work, and those above in the diving vessel, shared in the bonuses on gold recovered on a fixed scale unaffected by individual scores in gold bars. The whole job was team work and not personal pot-hunting.

The work on the wreck during that first season was not continuous. Frequently it was interrupted by weather, and for many days Damant with his Volunteer and divers was called off for other salvage jobs. Altogether ninety days were spent grubbing in the Laurentic's bowels, and on thirty-one days gold was found. The total haul of the season up to 31st August was four boxes (five bars each) and 522 bars-542 bars valued at about £920,000. Towards the end of it all, on 28th August, we find this delightfully human entry in Damant's diary: "Found two wires ashore. Frightened! Bad-worse-dead? No daughter, 3 A.M. All well."

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shock. After that work was suspended when mine-sweeping was in progress within five miles. While the divers were blasting their way into the wreck the decks would be covered with dead fish and attract the eager attention of shoals of dog-fish. Charges would be exploded in the midst of these dog-fish, yet they never seemed to be hurt. "On the contrary," says Damant," they could be seen rising to the surface almost in the foam of an explosion, and tearing at the bodies of the freshly killed teleosteans." He came to the general conclusion that fish do not seem to be killed outside a radius of two or three hundred yards, and he noted that those without swim-bladders did not seem to be affected at all.

The year 1918 was blank in so far as gold - hunting had claims upon the Admiralty's attention. There were other and more urgent things to do, so that eighteen months elapsed before Damant was ordered back to Lough Swilly to dig once more into the carcass of the Laurentic. It was now 1919, and he was able to secure the assistance of the fully equipped salvage steamer Racer, a type of vessel which, like the famous Ranger of the Liverpool Salvage Association, is a self-contained travelling workshop. There were for the future to be no more troubles with defective air-compressors

that in the Volunteer was constantly going wrong,-and

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tion for divers suffering from "bends" approached the luxurious. A diver could lie inside a great steel cylinder undergoing compression and have tea passed in to him through an airlock.

In general appearance there had been few changes at the wreck, though for eighteen months the Atlantic swells had had their will upon her. The job of burrowing into the vessel and clearing the old crater was resumed, at first with fairly gratifying results. But then the pockets petered out, and it became clear that the greater quantity of the bars had been widely distributed. The rich lode of 1917 was soon exhausted in 1919 (it yielded 315 further bars, about £535,000), and the hunt had to begin again on a wider and more laborious scale. Hitherto Damant had been intent upon driving a shaft down through the wreck; now he had to remove the wreck itself piecemeal. It was not until gold ceased to come up from the initial boring that he was compelled to face the larger, and for a long time, less fruitful operation.

The winter gales of 1919-20 helped by breaking up the remaining superstructures and depositing plates and decks upon Damant's crater. These were peeled off, and taken to the surface, and then it was found that a new and formidable obstacle had obtruded itself. From above and around broken fragments of chairs, planking, baths, tiles, and so

crater, and from below sand and stones had pushed upwards from the sea bottom and become caked into a solid mass "reinforced with cot frames and spring mattresses.

The years 1920 and 1921 were almost blank as regards gold, though they were chockfull of toil and disappointment. As plates and solid lumps of metal were blasted away the sand would well up, inexhaustible and resistless, and fill the space again. Large centrifugal pumps and dredging grabs were tried, but failed for lack of space within which to work, and Damant was driven back upon slow and terribly painful hand work. In fine weather the divers gained; in bad weather the sand. "Very fortunately," he writes, "a few odd bars of gold turned up and kept hope alive when failure seemed to be threatening." The fruit of 1920 was 7 bars, and of 1921 43 bars-50 bars, or £85,000 in two toilsome years. Not the least of Damant's anxieties at the end of those two unfruitful years was to convince My Lords at the Admiralty that the gold was there in the wreck to be found, and that it could be found and salved by removing enough of the wreck. Fortunately even in his two bad years he had recovered more than enough to repay the costs of the salvage work, which were some £20,000 for a season.

By the end of 1921 so much of the wreck's structure had

makes one understand the unlimited faith of the divers in their commander.

At the end of the season of 1922 Damant was able to report that 895 bars (about 1 millions sterling) had been recovered in 77 diving days out of a season of 198 days, and that there had again been no accidents to life or limb. Indeed, the freedom from serious accidents from first to last in the many perils of the work shows the degree of care which was exercised throughout. Once in the early days a diver became imprisoned beneath a large plate owing to the breaking of a wire hoisting cable. He called for air and more air, for he felt that his spine was being broken, and he got some relief as the extra pressure swelled out his diving dress. But though the diver might call for more air, Damant had to balance the risks. Too much air would certainly burst the dress and drown the diver. So the supply was actually throttled and the man's spine risked, while a rescuing diver rigged a new wire to the imprisoning plate. In nine minutes the first diver was released "unruffled and none the worse." This instance

The long years of labour culminated in the season of 1923 with the recovery of 1255 bars of gold of a value of over two millions sterling. This brought up the total number of bars salved and stowed in the Bank to the credit of the Treasury to 3057 out of the original consignment in the Laurentic of 3211 bars. Over 95 per cent had been recovered; less than 5 per cent remained. Something like three-quarters of the huge vessel had been picked to pieces and removed, and, except for the intrusive sand, her bottom plates were almost clear. It was a great work, and one is glad for Damant's sake, and for the sake of his dauntless divers who had fought the good fight with him-fifteen of them,that the job was not left uncompleted. As now tried and proved artists in salvage, they craved permission to put in those final touches which make immortal a perfected picture.

So with light hearts they set forth in the spring of 1924 for the last lap or varnishing day, or whatever one may elect to call it. The great carpet of plate upon which and under which they were now to search for those last 154 bars was not continuous. There were rents and port-holes in it, and under the action of the sea it crept so that gold which had fallen through apertures might be hidden be