156 PICTURING MIRACLES 



met on my head while the other boy would start 

 pumping air to me. The first boy was supposed to 

 lower me slowly. He never did learn to do this part 

 of his work carefully and would throw the hose and 

 life line overboard and when he did this I would go 

 down head first, landing on the bottom with the 

 helmet full of water. When this happened I would 

 have to get up on my knees and wait until the sec- 

 ond boy had pumped in enough air to force out the 

 water. I got used to it after a while but it was neither 

 very comfortable nor assuring and my glasses always 

 got wet with no way of drying them. Standing or 

 sitting erect, the water came to my chin and a con- 

 tinued stream of bubbles coming out where the hel- 

 met rested on my shoulders I was really quite com- 

 fortable. 



I had to learn first how to walk, taking short well- 

 braced steps; then to judge distances, things ten feet 

 away looked twenty, and thirty-five or forty feet was 

 the limit of vision. Everything blended off into dark- 

 ness beyond that. 



Holding a camera in my left hand I at first had 

 to get it very close to my helmet window to find the 

 various levers operating the controls. Reaching for 

 one of them was like a baby trying to find his mouth. 

 I would hit anywhere within a few inches of the 



