By Gregory Clark, Illustrated by James Frise, August 26, 1939.
“How the dickens,” demanded Jimmie Frise hotly, “did you lose the engine?”
“It just fell off,” I stated patiently.
“Outboard engines can’t fall off,” declared Jim loudly. “If you fasten the screws tight, and look at them once a day. Just once a day. It isn’t much to ask.”
“I am not the kind of man,” I said, “who can look at anything regularly once a day. I’m the kind that fastens things once and for all. And if they don’t hold, it’s just too bad.”
“It sure is too bad,” said Jim. “Here I’ve been counting on borrowing your engine all week. I’ve planned this trip and got everything packed, the lunch hamper and everything. And now you say, quite coolly, your engine fell off.”
“Well, it did,” I stated hotly myself. “Do you imagine I pushed it off, just because you wanted to borrow it today? An engine that cost $140?”1
“You take the loss of it very coolly,” said Jim.
“Well, how else can you take it?” I retorted. “There I was sailing along, with a good old faithful engine humming behind me. And all of a sudden, plop, it’s gone.”
“Didn’t you try to catch it?” demanded Jimmie.
“Catch it?” I cried. “I had hold of it. I was steering it. And it simply yanked itself out of my hand.”
“But you could have made a grab for it,” complained Jim.
“Listen, it was my engine, wasn’t it?” I said angrily. “It wasn’t your engine. Of course I made a grab for it. But it went straight down, leaving a trail of bubbles, and there I was, drifting along without even any oars.”
“I think you were very careless,” said Jim, “with something worth $140.”
With people like Jimmie, it is useless to explain, much less argue. They get an idea in their heads and there it lodges.
“Jim,” I said, “that engine didn’t owe me anything. It was four years old and had done a good $140 worth of work for me. I don’t regret its loss.”
“You could have turned it in on a new one and got $40 for it,” said Jim.
“I admit I am out some cash,” I agreed. “But that isn’t my philosophy. My philosophy is, what’s to be is to be. I even agree that I should be the kind of man who carefully examines the screws on an outboard engine every day, so as to never lose that $40 turn-in value. But it so happens, I am the kind of guy that likes to pay $40 in four years just for the privilege of not having to look at the screws every day. That comes to only $10 a year. It isn’t much to pay for a nice little bit of freedom.”
“You’ll never amount to anything, with that kind of a philosophy,” stated Jim.
“Well, what do I want to amount to?” I inquired. “Do I want to amount to one of those tight, measly, mean old buzzards that go through life peering and prying at the screws of outboard engine, so that he can be the richest guy in the graveyard?”
“I still think you might have taken a little precaution,” said Jim, “especially when you knew I wanted that engine for today.”
“Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay.”
“Whereabouts did it fall off?” inquired Jimmie.
“In 15 feet of water,” I said, “right off that point by Bain’s Island. It’s a goner.”
Wesley the Scientist
“Would you know,” pursued Jimmie, “just about where? How far out from the point? And how many yards east or west of the point?”
“I suppose,” I said sweetly, “you are going to dive for it? It only weighs 40 pounds, and it is only in 15 feet of water, and you can’t even swim, much less dive.”
“I had an idea,” said Jim.
“I suppose,” I continued, “that you will row the boat while I dive for it, maybe?”
“No, you’re past all diving,” said Jim, looking at me in the middle, and he is able to express much with his glance. “But down at the Landing there is a young fellow, one of the native sons, who has a sort of diving outfit.”
“You’ll never find it,” I assured him. “I spent two hours peering down in the water and dragging with big fish hooks. It’s probably lodged amongst rocks.”
“This kid,” said Jim, “has a home-made diving outfit. He made it himself. It has a big cylinder that fits over your head, with pads around your shoulders. It is weighted, and he has a hose running down to the head-piece, with an ordinary tire pump to shove the air down.”
“He couldn’t go 15 feet down, I scoffed.
“He charges 25 cents,” said Jim, “to let you down eight feet at the wharf at his place, and see the fish and all the eerie things on the bottom.”
“It’s extremely dangerous,” I declared. “Lots of kids have been drowned playing with amateur diving suits. They get tangled up in the ropes.”
“Well, this boy never lets anybody else monkey with it,” explained Jim. “He takes charge and watches every move. I’m going to see if he won’t help me find your engine.”
“It’s hopeless, Jim,” I assured. “You’d need a scow and everything.”
But when an hour later Jim returned in a boat with a scientific young man and a big iron diving helmet built out of scrap iron, with a whole tackle of hose, pump, ropes and gadgets, they had no scow. The whole outfit was accommodated in an ordinary skiff.
“You pay the costs,” said Jim, “if I get your engine.”
“You won’t get the engine,” I said. “It’s your adventure. How much is it?”
“Fifty cents an hour2,” said Jim.
“Okay then; I’ll pay the cost, and if I get the engine it will be mine.”
“Nothing doing,” I stated firmly. “That’s my engine, even if it is at the bottom of the lake. If you want to go and get it, in order to go on this picnic of yours, okay. But it’s my engine.”
“Very well,” said Jim, “I’ll pay the costs, but I’ll feel a lot freer about borrowing the engine any time I want it.”
“I don’t see how you could feel any freer than you do,” I stated, getting into the boat with them.
The young man’s name was Wesley, a name I had thought had gone out of fashion. He was extremely solemn about his diving apparatus. He had it as neatly coiled and stacked as if it were government property. “The principle of the thing,” he said, “is, Mr. Frise puts the helmet on and sets it snug and lowers himself over this little portable ladder I constructed. You hold the rope and pay it out as he descends. I am pumping. We got to be very watchful the rope and the hose don’t get snarled, or else.”
Owing to Specific Gravity
“How does he get back up?” I inquired.
“Owing to specific gravity,” said Wesley, “he is very light in the water. All he has got to do is sort of wish to come up and he gets light, see.”
“And where does the air go you pump down?” I demanded.
“It just comes up in bubbles,” said Wesley.
So we rowed across to Bain’s Island, and I did a job of navigation. It is not easy to recollect details of your position after the lapse of a whole day, especially when, at the time of the disaster, you were filled with indignation, excitement and no oars in the boat. However, I had Wesley row slowly back and forward, searching my memory and watching the gooseflesh sprout all over Jimmie as he sat with increasing mock cheerfulness in his bathing suit, carefully feeling the iron helmet and the rubber hose and other parts of the machine.
“I think,” I stated finally, “it was just right about here.”
“Do we take soundings first?” asked Jimmie.
“Generally we do,” said Wesley, and he I took a clothes-line with a stone on it and lowered it to the bottom. Then he hauled up, measuring it off in yards against his nose, arm extended.
“Seventeen feet,” said he. “Nigh, three fathoms.”
“Are there any leeches around here?” asked Jimmie. “Or snapping turtles or anything?”
“No,” I assured him. “This is fine clear water, though we did have quite a pest of watersnakes around Bain’s Island last summer.”
“Don’t we anchor?” suggested Jim, seeing no anchor in the boat.
“No, you act as an anchor,” said Wesley, “and you can walk along the bottom if you like.”
“What are the signals?” asked Jim.
“Mr. Clark holds the signal rope,” explained Wesley. “One means okay, two means less air, three means pull me up.”
Jim repeated these signals three times very loudly, and then swung on to the ladder that Wesley had hung overside. After a long last look at the coiled hose, the rope, which I held anxiously in my hand, and a final repetition of the signal numbers, Jim signalled Wesley to put the helmet on. It weighed Jim down, so heavy was it. Yet when he swung down and had the helmet half submerged he smiled cheerfully through the glass at us and moved his head around to show he was perfectly comfortable.
With a mute wave of his hand, he let go the ladder and I felt his weight on the rope. He weighed about 30 pounds, it seemed.
It was a grisly sort of feeling, paying out that rope with your friend tied to it. The rope was tied to a belt around Jim’s chest, and a feeling of tremendous responsibility brought perspiration out all over me.
It was spooky, too, to see the continuous bubbles rising as Wesley slowly and anxiously pumped. But spookiest of all was to feel the boat being towed, via the rope in my hands, as Jim started to walk slowly around on the bottom.
He kept giving the one short jerk which meant okay.
“He’s okay,” I kept saying breathlessly to Wesley.
“Don’t pay out the rope,” commanded Wesley, the scientist. “Just let him have enough to tow us.”
Jim walked this way and that. He seemed to climb over small hills and go down into little valleys. He probably wasn’t down two minutes, but it seemed like an hour when he finally signalled three.
“Up,” I said, rising and starting to haul.
“Up,” echoed Wesley, very scientific, pumping with one hand and gently lifting the hose in with the other, coiling it.
And with a great bubble and burst, out came Jim’s helmet beside the ladder and behind the steamy glass Jim was beaming.
“He’s got it,” I shouted.
“I See Something Shining”
Wesley hoisted the heavy helmet off, and Jim, all warm, breathed the cool air and then gasped “I see something shining about 50 feet to the north there.”
“It couldn’t be that far out,” I protested. “This is about where it fell off.”
“Of course,” agreed Jim. “But all I’m doing is looking on the bottom.”
So Wesley rowed over in the direction Jim indicated, and again Jim went overside and again vanished into 16 feet of water, Wesley and I, a little more courageously this time, manned the pump and the signal rope.
“Okay,” came the signal and Jim hit bottom. And then almost at once came a series of sharp single jerks, okay, okay, okay.
“He’s got it,” I cried happily.
“You’ll need to lift pretty easy,” said Wesley. “He’ll have his hands full.”
Jim seemed to cruise around the bottom quite a bit, returning to the same place each time, and finally, after all of three minutes, punctuated with seemingly joyous single jerks that all was well, Jim gave the three jerks to hoist. And as I hoisted, I knew the engine was with him.
Out of the water burst the round bell of the helmet. Through the steamy glass Jim beamed and shouted soundlessly.
Then out of the water came the propeller end of an engine.
But it was not mine.
It was a bigger, much newer engine than mine. It showed some signs of having been in the water a considerable time.
But in addition to the engine up flopped a steel fishing rod and reel, which Jim had tied by its line to the engine. Various other gadgets appeared, as I let go the rope and grabbed the engine to help hoist it on board. A wet sack of tools, a square brown tackle box, a heavy Thermos jar still full of something.
Wesley hoisted the helmet off Jim.
“Salvage,” cried Jim breathlessly.
“This isn’t my engine,” I accused.
“No, and I saw no signs of yours,” replied Jim. “But I found this one, and it’s mine.”
“And all the tackle,” I complained.
“That,” said Wesley, “must be the outfit those American tourists lost when they dumped here early in the season. They dragged all day for it and then gave it up in disgust.”
“Did they leave any address?” asked Jim.
“No, they were just passers-by,” said Wesley. “I guess this is all yours.”
“But look here,” I interrupted. “How about my engine?”
“Ask Wesley,” suggested Jim, turning to inspect his beautiful big engine.
“How about continuing right now,” I said. “I’ll pay the costs.”
“You can go down,” said Jim. “I’m too cold.”
He was blue. There were two leeches on him. He was shaking like a dog on a doorstep.
“Wesley,” I suggested, “how much would you charge to get a friend and spend a day finding my engine here?”
“Fifty cents an hour, and a dollar an hour for my friend who goes down,” said Wesley.
So tomorrow Wesley and his friend and I will continue the search for my engine. I know exactly where I lost it. It was about 100 feet this way of where we looked today. It is a wonder to me Jimmie did not see it shining.
Anyway, he’s gone on his picnic, with his new engine.
Editor’s Notes:
This story appeared in Greg Clark & Jimmie Frise Outdoors (1979).
Leave a Reply