below our feet; we were partially submerged. I looked up to the yolks of
glass, but the light that struggled through them was so pale and sickly
that I turned my eyes to the sea below me as a relief to my confined
vision. We were now fast descending--one by one the gas lights were
changed from their dim paleness to a green hue, the same as that of the
sea below us, and, in an instant after, I heard a loud whizzing, which
was produced by the displaced body of waters rushing impetuously into
the void made by the descending bell. The sound made me instinctively
turn my head upwards, as if I had been in the attitude of addressing the
King of the heavens, whom I had left in the regions of upper air. I grew
dizzy, and thought I would have fallen from the bench, down into the
bottom of the sea. My nervousness made me grasp firmly the plank, as my
only means of safety from what I conceived to be impending destruction.
Whether that sound then ceased, or my hearing became more obtuse, I know
not; but the first thing, after a few minutes, that I was conscious of
was the grasp of the hand of Jenkins, who held me firm by the arm, and
the guttural sounds of the German, as he still carelessly sung detached
lines of his ballad. On looking up, the green lights swam in my eyes;
but the whizzing sound had greatly ceased; and I directed again my gaze
to the apparently bottomless element below, which was as calm as glass,
and through which I saw, flying past the mouth of the bell, innumerable
fishes, reflecting, as they darted off, a thousand varied hues, in the
midst of the green medium through which they hurried.
The continued descent was made apparent to the eye by the progress of
the rim of the bell through the water, and indicated, in another form,
by the creaking sound of the crane on the lighter, which, rendered
indistinct by the medium of the water, seemed to come from miles
distant. Though partially recovered from the first effects of the
submersion, I had no proper idea of time, and there was no mode of
measuring the depth. It seemed to me as if we had descended many
furlongs, though we had not got beyond ten fathoms: I could not get quit
of the idea, though I arranged my thoughts in the process of
calculation. Jenkins had now let go my arm, as he saw that I was able to
sit without danger of falling; and the German was busy peering through
his bushy eyebrows down into the deep, as if he expected soon "to see
the land." I almost instinctively gazed down for the same object, and it
was not without an effort at discrimination by the power of my judgment
that I discovered myself seeking a vision of the bottom of the sea, as
if it had been a haven for a shipwrecked mariner in distress. While my
eyes were thus fixed on the waters--in which I could see nothing but the
swarms of fishes flying past, or reeling in the confusion of terror--I
was startled, almost to falling off the bench, by a loud reverberating
clang on the side of the bell. My first impression was, that the bell
had struck on a rock; and I turned fearfully to seek the eye of Jenkins.
He held the large hammer in his hand with which he had given the stroke.
He told me that he wanted more air, and that this was the signal to the
workers of the air-pump. His eye was fixed on the air holes, with which
the pipes communicated. I thought he appeared alarmed; he exchanged a
look with Vanderhoek, and the eye of the latter was soon also fixed on
the same spot. We were yet still descending, and the German, turning
round, pointed down. I followed his finger, and saw a thick, hazy-like
appearance, as if the waters were troubled, and masses of long sea-weed
brushed against the rim of the bell. Vanderhoek immediately seized the
hammer, rang two loud peals, and the motion downwards ceased. We hung
suspended in the sea, I know not how many fathoms down. A loud hissing
sound came from the air-valves; but it was every moment interrupted, as
if some part of the apparatus failed in its continuous working. The eyes
of both Jenkins and Vanderhoek were again intensely fixed upon the
holes; it was too manifest to me that they both saw something wrong in
the working of the air pumps, though they said nothing to me; and,
indeed, I was so much affected by their ominous looks that I could put
no question to them.
"Is there not an under current here, Karl?" said Jenkins, attempting to
appear composed.
"Ja," replied Vanderhoek; "see, there is von gut sign. The meer-weeds
are drifting to the east; and see, there is von piece of the wreck
moving from the west."
I looked down, and saw the edge of a piece of black timber making its
appearance within the verge of the rim of the bell; but, in consequence
of the small angle afforded by our pent-up position, we could not
observe more than two inches of it. Large bushes of confusedly entangled
sea-weed were brushing past, and, as they stuck about the rim, darkened
the interior so much that we could scarcely see each other. These seemed
of but small importance to Jenkins, who was evidently still unsatisfied
with the working of the pumps, and got upon his feet to examine into the
cause of their irregular and interrupted action. It struck me, at this
time, that Jenkins' question about the current had more meaning in it
than was made apparent to me: I suspected that he entertained fears that
the air tubes had got entangled in some way with the bell chain. His
efforts did not seem to produce any greater regularity of action in the
tubes; the whizzing noise continued every now and then to be
interrupted; at one time, it stopped altogether for about a minute. The
machinery was working reluctantly, and with a struggling difficulty that
was apparent to the eye and ear; but other proofs of a more decided and
fearful kind were awaiting us. I felt a painful load at my breast, as if
I wanted air; my respiration became quick and unsatisfactory; a swimming
of the head came over me; I could scarcely see my companions without
great effort to fix my wavering vision. The darkness at the mouth of the
bell continued to increase; the piece of the wreck was moving slowly
under us; the weeds were increasing. I could perceive that Vanderhoek
was also labouring for breath; Jenkins, relinquishing his efforts at the
air tube mouths, turned, looked wildly at his neighbour, and, staggering
down upon the bench, struggled to get hold of the hammer, which, when he
grasped it tremblingly, fell out of his hands down into the bottom of
the sea.
"In the name of God! what is the meaning of all this, Jenkins?" I cried,
in a voice that was choked for want of air.
He lay upon the bench, and gasped, apparently unable to speak; he looked
to Vanderhoek, and pointed to an instrument in the shape of a
mattock--shaking his hand, and muttering indistinctly, "Haste! haste!"
The sign and words were perfectly understood by Vanderhoek as well as
by myself. I looked on, with the intense agony of fear and impeded
lungs, and added some irregular and confused signs (for my voice died in
my choking throat) to the German to obey the request of his
neighbour--but these were unnecessary: the man himself saw the fearful
position in which we were placed, with as keen a perception of the
danger, and as anxious a wish to remove it, as either of us. He was,
however, struggling for want of air to a greater extent than either
Jenkins or myself. His face was swollen and blue, his mouth open, his
eyes protruding from his head, his breast heaving like one under the
weight of the angel of death. Yet he tried to combat the antagonist
powers of cruel fate; and, raising his body from the bench, he bent
forward to clutch the mattock, with which to give the clangs that formed
the signal to raise us from our water-bound prison. He had to reach over
the body of Jenkins, who lay coiled up, almost lifeless from
suffocation; then, in his efforts to get at the instrument, he fell down
through the mouth of the bell, and stuck fast among the tangled weed. At
this very instant, I heard again the sound of the air-pump whizzing in
my ears: it came like the music of angels; and, while Vanderhoek hung
fast by a rope that was attached to the bench, I felt the inspiring
power of the oxygen coming through the air tubes: my breast rose--my
lungs inhaled the sweet aliment--I felt strength infused into my blood
and nerves--and, raising myself, laid hold of Vanderhoek; but my energy
failed in the effort that exceeded my powers; he fell from my grasp, and
plunged overhead among the waters and loose weeds by the side of the
dark piece of the wreck, that still seemed to move, though almost
imperceptibly, to the east. It was a little time before he came to the
surface again, which satisfied me that we were still a considerable way
from the bottom, notwithstanding of the accumulation of algae that had
deceived us into a contrary opinion. When his head again appeared within
the bell, I was struck fearfully by the horrid expression of his face,
which, pale before, now looked green and hideous through the wreaths of
weed that hung round his hair. The influx of atmospheric air partially
revived his energies for self-preservation; then laying hold of the
rope, he got a clutch of the bench, and clambered up. He seemed shocked
by some cause of terror, even greater than the danger to which we were
yet exposed.
"Shrecken! shrecken!" he muttered, with difficulty. "There is von corpse
of a woman there--there--down in the wreck!"
And he pointed to the black fragment of the broken ship that lay below
us.
"That is nothing, man," said I. "Give the signal, if you can. See, the
air-pump has stopped again. The men in the lighter know not our peril."
He attempted again to seize the mattock, and succeeded in grasping it;
but the small supply of air that had been sent us by the temporary
opening of the impeded tube, had been only sufficient to revive us
slightly; and the suddenness with which his powers were again
prostrated, by the recurring weakness that succeeded the cessation of
the supply of the natural aliment of the lungs, prevented him from
imparting strength to the signal. He gave one weak blow on the side of
the bell, and the instrument fell out of his nerveless hands upon the
bench. In a few moments more he was stretched beside Jenkins. I myself
now tried to lift my arms to seize the instrument. I succeeded only in
placing my hands upon it--I was unable to grasp it, and fell, with my
back on the side of the bell, powerless, and struggling, with open mouth
and heaving sternum, for what came not--a breath of living air.
We must, at this time, have been fully twenty minutes under water; and,
as it was our intention to have been an hour, there seemed to be no
chance of our being drawn up until we had all expired. I saw plainly, by
the noises that came from the tubes, that the men conceived they were
working regularly; and, so long as no signal was heard, they would work
on, ignorant of the dreadful situation in which we lay. I cast my eyes
on my companions. They lay like dead men; my only wonder, now that I can
calmly think of the subject, is, that they still kept upon the seats,
and did not tumble into the deep. I had scarcely any power of thinking.
I sat, writhing under the spasmodic action of suffocation, my eyes fixed
in the sockets, my brain swimming, and a burning sensation, like that
which attends a paroxysm of brain fever, shooting through the recesses
of thought. The recollection of that moment is even yet madness. The
bell was almost dark, and the green light that came through the yolks of
glass, fell faintly on the blue swollen faces of my companions, who I
thought were dead. I had still power to observe that there was a new
feature rising in that unprecedented situation of man's sufferings. Was
it possible, it may fairly be asked, that fate had it in store to add to
these agonies?
While thus I sat fixed immovably by weakness and despair, I observed
that the waters were rising visibly upon us, probably from the
absorption of the small quantity of oxygen that remained in the tainted
air around us. It had risen up half way between the rim and the seats,
and was gradually gaining upon me. A foot more would bring it to the
level of where I sat. My feet were already immersed, and the coldness
produced by the water operated in combination with the spasms in my
labouring chest to destroy vitality. The black fragment of the wreck
rose with the waters, and raised obliquely the side of the bell, which
may have been an additional cause for the rising of the sea within.
Through my glazed eye I saw, lying in a hollow of the broken raft, a
white figure--probably that seen by Vanderhoek when he fell into the
sea. By and by, it became more visible as the waters rose, and I saw
that it was the body of a female who had perished in the vessel. The
image of the apparition has haunted me to this hour, and shall do till I
die. A part of the dress which she had worn when she perished, still
clung to her--about the half of the skirt of a silk gown that had been
of some light colour, but had changed to a greenish hue. It was bound to
the waist by a sash or belt of a darker shade. Her bosom was bare, and
bore the same sickly hue of pale green; her face was placid; the eyes
were open; but one of the balls had been extracted by some reptile of
the deep; her long hair flowed among the weeds; and, hanging from the
lobe of the left ear, I saw a clear gem that shone with the brightness
of the stone called _aqua marina_. One of the arms had been taken off a
little above the elbow; the flesh at the end of the stump appeared
bloodless, and bleached to the colour of the skin; and limpets and other
kinds of small shell-fish lay on or adhered to the cuticle. My feelings
recoil from the recollections of the horrors of that apparition; and I
fear I may incur the charge of endeavouring to produce an effect by the
vulgar mode of harassing the mind with a minute description, too easily
effected, of what, for the sake of humanity, should be concealed.
There the body lay in all its green horror. It was rising gradually to
my side, within the bell, through the gloom of which the pale skin and
light robes sent a sickly gleam. I had no power to move myself away from
it. My body was bent so that my face was within a few inches of it; and
a slight undulation of the waters that were rising into the bell inch by
inch, imparted to the corpse a motion that made it dodge upwards and
downwards, as if it made efforts to touch my countenance. All was as
silent as death; for the slight agitation of the sea produced no noise.
I was gasping for breath; a short period would have put an end to my
sufferings, had not the air tubes again begun to send forth slight
hissing sounds, and a small portion of the food of the lungs came to
afford me sufficient power to contemplate, with greater distinctness and
increased agony, all the circumstances of my situation. I felt the small
boon instinctively as a relief: my breast again opened; I was able to
raise my head so as to be more beyond the touch of the floating corpse;
and as I lifted it, my eye fell on the flask of spirits that hung within
reach on the side of the bell. I now struggled to seize it, and
succeeded; but it was with many painful efforts that I got a portion of
the liquor poured into my mouth. The half-dead physical powers of my
system were, by this application, stimulated into something like
vitality, and I listened attentively, while my eye was still riveted on
the corpse that lay at my side, to the sound of the tubes. A motion of
the right limb of Vanderhoek attracted my attention, and raised a hope
that, if the air still continued to be supplied, he would recover; I
knew, too, that as the bell filled again with the atmospheric supply,
the waters would recede. But all my hopes were again prostrated; the
valve ceased; the entrance of the air was again stopped; I applied the
flask hastily again to my lips before the spasms of suffocation came
again upon me, but the power of the spirits seemed to have fled, having
no more influence over my system than a draught of water.
Thus was I again precipitated into my former condition of weakness and
helplessness--the choking symptoms of suffocation increased again in
intensity, and I was under the necessity to lie down on the seat, with
my head again on a level with the corpse of the female, that still kept
moving and dodging by my side. I was now as powerless to push it away as
I was before to remove myself from it. I felt it touch my skin. Its face
was close to mine--the pale cold cheek rubbed upon my chin and lips. The
glazed eye seemed fixed upon me, and the stump of the torn arm struck
upon me as the body moved. A higher undulation sometimes threw her
flowing hair over my eyes, where it lay till another movement of the
corpse took it off. I would have shut the lids of the protruding orbs
that stood fixed in my head, if I had had any power; but I could not--my
whole face being swollen, and the muscles as rigid as if in death. I was
thus compelled to receive the vision into my mind; and the touch seemed
to cling to the decaying sensibilities, as if it formed a part of them.
It is impossible that my sufferings could have lasted many minutes
longer if the air tubes had been entirely closed; but, as if it had been
determined by the stern fates that I should be suspended for a length of
time between life and death, there were kept up, at almost regular
intervals, two or three whizzing sounds of the entangled and obstructed
apparatus--an indication that small supplies of air were at these
moments thrown in upon me. It was only these sounds, the dodging of the
pale-green corpse, the touches of its cold skin, the light of its glazed
eye, the dark figures of my two companions, and the general gloom of the
bell, relieved slightly by the greenish-hued yolks of glass, that I was
sensible of perceiving. The internal workings of my mind seemed to have
ceased. I had scarcely any consciousness of a conception--the whole
cerebral functions concerned in thought and feeling being limited to
undefined sensation, that had only some connection with the power of
external perception.
Even this partial state of consciousness had died gradually away, for,
during a short period, I was totally beyond the reach of the power of
any external object. There is a blank in my recollection of these
touches and visions, which, though scarcely at the time coming within
the province of mind, have since been the most vivid perceptions ever
treasured up in my memory. Yet that period of all but total death was no
relief to me. The dim hazy vision of all around me dawned again, like
the shadowy renovations of a fearful dream that has sunk in sleep, and
risen again as the troubled fancy regained a portion of its activity.
These indistinct shadows of consciousness, as they came in the wake of
the physical power that felt the quickening influence of another draft
of air, carried more insufferable sensations in their dark forms than
had accompanied my more distinct perceptions. They were mere filmy
traces, broken and unconnected--exhibiting to me sometimes only the
darkness of the bell, sometimes the mere face; occasionally limited to
the eye alone, the stump of the arm alone, the ear-ring alone; sometimes
merely the two stretched-out forms of the men; sometimes the green deep
and the tangled sea-weed. Then the array of all the things around me
would suddenly flash upon me with a unity and a vividness that produced
one gleam of almost entire consciousness--in another moment
extinguished--and succeeded by another period of all but death--to be
again followed by a succession of the broken fragments of vision, when
the living powers were in a slight degree revived. I leave it to
physiologists and psychologists to account for these sudden exertions of
the reluming powers of the mind in the very lowest state of the dying
faculties. We see something of the same kind in the physical
economy--moments of strength in the most exhausted weakness--bright
glows of the taper of life in the socket of death--a collected unity of
power in moments of dissolution, as if the spirit made a last struggle
to assert its lost authority over the great archangel. I can speak at
least to their effects--a wretched boon of nature to miserable man,
where he can say no more than that he feels--that the boasted energies
of the soul seem to be all rolled up in one sensation of undescribable
pain.
I was awakened from this state of stupor by a loud clanking of chains
upon the top of the bell; and I heard the sound at the very moment when
I felt myself drawing a long breath. I had been unconscious of the
working of the air-pump, which must have been going on for some time,
though I cannot tell how long. The bell was replenished. I breathed
again freely, and became sensible. I looked round me, and saw all
things in the same position as formerly. The corpse was still by my
side, and my newly awakened horror made me struggle to rise. I
succeeded so far as to lean upon my arm, whereby I removed myself some
space from the dead body. The rattling of the chains still continued,
and I had the power of thinking so far, as to conjecture that efforts
were being made to draw up the bell. But new incidents were now in
progress. The air had revived Vanderhoek. I saw him stretching out his
arms, as if to relieve his chest, which was heaving violently. He drew
long inspirations, and struggled to turn himself on the seat. He
succeeded, and I saw his face, which was dreadfully swollen, and of a
dark livid colour. His eyes were wide open, and the light of life and
returning vision seemed to be illumining them. The first perception he
was conscious of was the vision of the corpse. His eye-balls turned,
fixed upon it, and recoiled from it; and strange guttural sounds, with
half-articulated words--"Shrecklich--shrecken!"--were wrung from him.
He looked wildly around him, shuddered, and grasped convulsively the
bench. Meanwhile, the rattling of the chains on the bell continued, and
a sudden jerk almost precipitated me into the sea. The bell had clearly
moved; the next moment it shook violently, from another effort to raise
it; it appeared to me to revolve; another sudden jerk followed; it rose
perceptibly; the water rushed in to fill up the void; the corpse of the
woman whirled round in the eddy; and I saw Jenkins' body fall from the
bench into the sea, and disappear.
Vanderhoek, who had now recovered his consciousness, uttered a loud cry
as he saw his companion sink. The continued fresh air seemed to
strengthen him far more rapidly than it did me, and I perceived that he
now made violent struggles to lay hold of the mattock. He succeeded
beyond my expectation; despair nerved his arm; he clutched the
instrument, and rung three successive clangs on the side of the bell.
These were probably unnecessary, as it was manifest now that those on
the lighter were doing everything in their power to rescue us from our
perilous situation. The chains still clanked, and we had ascended
perceptibly, though how far I had no means of ascertaining. There was
another stoppage, the German sat with the instrument still in his hand,
and his eye fixed on the body of the woman, which, from the continued
whirling of the water, span round and round, as if it had been placed
upon a pivot. After looking thus for a few moments, he started suddenly,
then reaching up his hand, seized wildly another flask that hung near
him, drained it to the bottom, and flung away the empty vessel. Some
time passed before I felt any further motion upwards; and the large
quantity of strong liquor that Vanderhoek had thrown into his still weak
body, operated upon him with a quickness that surprised me. He began to
get furious, talked incoherently, swung the iron mattock backwards and
forwards, and sung stanzas of the "Zechlied." This was a new source of
terror to me. He looked wildly at me as if he did not know who I was;
swore the oaths of his country, in which the words "teufel, donner,
blitzen," rang pre-eminently; used threats against me, as the cause of
all that had occurred to him and his companion. Then he looked at the
corpse, and, in a paroxysm of madness, struck the mattock into its white
bosom, accompanying his action with wild oaths. I expected every moment
that the next stroke would be on my own head, and sat in readiness to
seize the weapon, and, if possible, debilitated as I was, to wrench it
from his hands. My efforts to calm and pacify him were unavailing. I
pointed to the side of the bell, and, in broken accents, for I could yet
scarcely speak, told him to ring again; but he did not seem to
understand; giving me wild looks, showering broken oaths upon me, and
holding up the mattock in a threatening attitude, as if he would cleave
my head in twain.