Note (return) — OBSERVATIONS AND ADVENTURES IN SUBMARINE DIVING.

Such were the condition, period and place—the people crushed between the upper and nether millstones of two hostile and contending civilizations—when native thrift evoked a new element, that set in sharp contrast the heroism of life and the heroism of death, the courage that incurs danger to save against the courage that accepts danger to destroy. The work was the saving of the valuable arms—costing the government thirty thousand dollars per gun—and the machinery of the sunken Milwaukee.5 By a curious circumstance this party of divers was composed partly, if not principally or entirely, of mechanics and engineers who were exempt from military service under the economic laws of the Confederacy, yet who in heart and soul sympathized with the rebellion. They had worked to save for the South: now they were to work and save for the North. It was a service of superadded danger. All the peril incurred from missile weapons was increased by the hidden danger of the secret under-sea and the presence of the terrible torpedoes. These floated everywhere, in all innocent, unsuspicious shapes. One monster, made of boiler iron, a huge cross, is popularly believed to be still hidden in the bay. The person possessing the chart wherein the masked battery's place was set down is said to have destroyed it and fled. Let us hope, however, that this is an error.