You'd hardly imagine how clean and light the air tasted.

"Of course, with four inches of lead in your boot soles, and your
head in a copper knob the size of a football, and been thirty-five
minutes under water, you don't break any records running. I ran like
a ploughboy going to work. And half way to the trees I saw a dozen
niggers or more, coming out in a gaping, astonished sort of way
to meet me.

"I just stopped dead, and cursed myself for all the fools out of
London. I had about as much chance of cutting back to the water as
a turned turtle. I just screwed up my window again to leave my hands
free, and waited for them. There wasn't anything else for me to do.

"But they didn't come on very much. I began to suspect why. 'Jimmy
Goggles,' I says, 'it's your beauty does it.' I was inclined to be a
little light-headed, I think, with all these dangers about and the
change in the pressure of the blessed air. 'Who're ye staring at?' I
said, as if the savages could hear me. 'What d'ye take me for? I'm
hanged if I don't give you something to stare at,' I said, and with
that I screwed up the escape valve and turned on the compressed air
from the belt, until I was swelled out like a blown frog. Regular
imposing it must have been. I'm blessed if they'd come on a step;
and presently one and then another went down on their hands and knees.
They didn't know what to make of me, and they was doing the extra
polite, which was very wise and reasonable of them. I had half a mind
to edge back seaward and cut and run, but it seemed too hopeless. A
step back and they'd have been after me. And out of sheer desperation
I began to march towards them up the beach, with slow, heavy steps,
and waving my blown-out arms about, in a dignified manner. And inside