Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: HEROIC LIVES IX UNIVERSAL RELIGION Chapter I A HERO OF THE SEA (Adapted from Captain Scott, Master Diver, by F. Hopxinson Smith) A Life Saver and a sea captain was Thomas A. Scott. When first we hear of him he was a boy of fifteen, captain of a little sloop in the Chesapeake bay, a "bay pungy" which carried wood from port to port. In the bow of the boat was "a fo'castle the size of a dry goods box in which slept the captain and crew." The crew consisted of a negro boy of twelve. When Scott grew to manhood he became a master diver. He would put on a suit of rubber and fasten over his head a great helmet. Into this helmet the air was pumped so he could breathe when he dropped into the depths of the sea. Heavy plates at back and breast and shoes of lead made him sink to the bottom. There he would explore the wrecks of sunken steamers. If the ships could not be saved he would put dynamite under them to blow them up when they blocked the channel of the harbor. Once he stayed under water for seven hours and forty-eight minutes, which was a record up to that time. For seven years he worked with Mr. F. Hopkinson Smith, building the Race Rock Lighthouse off New London Harbor. Now this lighthouse was to be built out in the wild Atlantic ocean, eight miles from any shore. The foundation they had to work on was a shoal of rocks. Part of this shoal was above thesurface of the water. The other part was deep under the waves. They decided to fill this submerged part with rocks until it was on a level with the rest. They could work at this only when the tide was low. Then Captain Scott, dressed in his rubber suit and helmet, would dive down into the sea and place the foundation stones on the slippery rocks. Sometimes he would have to dive again and again to place one stone, becaus...