A large part of my life has been spent in seeking and experiencing
novel sensations. Precisely what quality of mind it is that urges me to
try experiments with myself and other things I do not know positively;
but I firmly believe it to be dauntless intrepidity. My fond mother,
in early days, used to call it a noble thirst for information, and
predicted for me a life of scientific eminence; other people have been
so ill-natured as to call it abject imbecility, and to predict an early
grave from a broken neck or a dynamite explosion, or something equally
sensational and decided. Never mind what it is. In boyhood's days it
led me once up the chimney, once on a river in a wash-tub, once down
a gravel-pit with a broken head, and frequently across my father's
knee, with a pain in another place. Since I have arrived at years of
discretion (or greater indiscretion--just as you please), it has taken
me up in a balloon, out to sea in a torpedo-boat, up the Matterhorn
(with no guide but a very general map of Europe, having the height of
the mountain marked on it in very plain figures), along Cheapside on a
bicycle at mid-day, to a football match in the capacity of referee, and
lastly, and most recently, down under water in a diving-dress. Many of
these experiences were sharp enough while they lasted, and the diving
was as disturbing as most; but, still, I believe nothing was quite so
uncomfortable as the football referee-ship.
[Illustration: "MY DIVING-DRESS."]
But, just now, I am concerned only with the diving. I have been now and
again to Whitstable, where, I believe by some remarkable process of
Nature, every third male person is born a diver. Anyway, Whitstable is
the place where divers mostly grow, and where I caught the temptation
to go a-diving myself. I should feel grateful to any obliging Anarchist
who would blow up Whitstable to-morrow.
I mentioned my desire to one or two old divers who had permitted me to
make their acquaintance in consideration of a suitable succession of
drinks, but met with jeers and suspicion. I believe they were afraid
of opposition in the business. But Whitstable never produced a diver
that could put me off. I took the royal road. I bought a diving-dress
for myself--how much I paid I shall not say here, for why should
an unsympathetic world measure my lunacy by pounds, shillings, and
pence?--especially as that would make rather a long measurement of it.
Never mind what I paid. I got the dress, and I also got permission
to go down and amuse myself on a sunken coasting vessel lying off
Shoeburyness.
It was a very noble diving-suit, and the new india-rubber squeaked
musically as I moved, and smelt very refreshing. There was a
shield-shaped plate, rather like a label on a decanter, hanging on my
chest, that would have looked more complete with "Whisky," or some
similar inscription, on it. There was a noble metal collar--about
thirty-two, the size would have been, on the usual scale. I had also
a very fetching red night-cap, while my helmet was a terror to all
beholders. I don't mind confessing to a certain amount of discomfort
while they were building me up in this dress--partly due to a vivid
imagination. The helmet made me think of the people in the story who
put hot-pots on the heads of strangers, and I seemed stifling at once.
What if I were unpacked at last from this smelly integument--a corpse?
But this was unmanly and un-diver-like. There wasn't much comfort to
be got out of the leaden shoes--try a pair for yourself and see--but
when all was ready I made a shift to get overboard and down the ladder
provided. It was not a great deal of the outer world that I could see
through my windows, and I hung on to that ladder with something of a
desperate clutch. When at last the water stretched away level around my
windows, then, I confess, I hesitated for a moment. But I made the next
step with a certain involuntary blink, and I was under water. All the
heaviness--or most of it--had gone out of my feet, and all my movements
partook of a curiously easy yet slowish character. It looked rather
dark below me, and I tried to remember the specific gravity of the
human body in figures by way of keeping jolly. At the top of my helmet
the air-escape-valve bubbled genially, and I tried to think of myself
as rather a fine figure of a monster among the fish, with a plume of
bubbles waving over my head. You do think of trivial things on certain
cheerful occasions. Remember Fagin in the dock, for instance.
[Illustration: "I WAS ENGULFED IN AN AWFUL CONVULSION."]
[Illustration: "IN THE HOLD WERE AN IMMENSE NUMBER OF BARRELS."]
It was not as long as it seemed before I was on the wreck, and down
below in the nearest hold. Regular professionals had already been at
work, and access to different parts of the ship had been made easy.
Now, in this big hold was an immense number of barrels, stood on end
and packed tightly together--barrels of oil, to judge from externals.
I tried to move one, but plainly they were all jammed tightly
together, and not one would shift. I took the light axe with which I
had furnished myself, using it alternately as wedge and lever, and at
last felt the barrel move. I had certainly loosened it, and pulled up
the axe with the intention of trying to lift the barrel, when I was
suddenly engulfed in an awful convulsion as of many earthquakes in a
free fight. The world was a mob of bouncing oil-barrels, which hit me
everywhere as I floundered in intricate somersaults, and finally found
myself staggering at the bottom of the hold, and staring at the roof,
whereunto all the barrels were sticking like balloons, absolutely
blocking up the hatchway above me.
What was this? Some demoniac practical joke of fiends inhabiting this
awful green sea about me? Were they grinning at me from corners of the
hold? or had some vast revolution in the ways of Nature taken place
in a second, and the law of gravity been reversed? It was not at all
warm down there, but I perspired violently. Then a notion flashed upon
me. Those barrels must have been _empty_. Jammed together, they stayed
below, of course, but once the jam was loosened they would fly at once
towards the surface. Then I thought more. I had been an ass. Of course,
those barrels would do as they had done, even were they full of oil.
Oil floats on water, as anybody should know. They might be either full
or empty, it didn't matter a bit. I had forgotten that I was moving in
a different element from the air I was used to, where barrels of oil
did _not_ incontinently fly up into space without warning. Obviously,
I had made a fool of myself, but I had some comfort in the reflection
that there was nobody about to see it. Then it came upon me suddenly
that I would rather have someone there after all, for I was helpless!
Those horrible barrels were having another jam in the hatchway now, and
my retreat was cut off entirely. Here I was like a rat in a cage, boxed
in on every side. My communication-cord and my air-pipe led up between
the barrels, to outer safety; but what of that? I perspired again. What
would happen to me now? Why did I ever make a submarine Guy Fawkes of
myself, and thus go fooling about, where I had no business, at the
end of a flexible gas-pipe? If I could have dated myself back an hour
at that moment, I believe I should have changed my mind about going
in for this amusement. At this, I began thinking about trivial things
again--how, paraphrasing a certain definition of angling, diving might
be described as matter of a pipe with a pump at one end and something
rather worse than a fool at the other. I determined, if ever I got out
alive, to fire off that epigram at the earliest possible moment--so
here it is.
[Illustration: "I HACKED AWAY VICIOUSLY."]
I made an effort, pulled myself together, and determined on heroic
measures. My axe lay near, and, with a little groping, I found it.
I would hew my way out of this difficulty through the side of the
vessel. I turned on the inoffensive timbers at my side and hacked
away viciously--with, I really fancy, a certain touch of that wild,
stern, unholy joy that anyone feels who is smashing somebody else's
property with no prospect of having to pay for it. Every boy with a
catapult, who lives near an empty house, will understand the feeling I
mean--especially if the empty house has a large conservatory.
The timbers were certainly stout. The work was a bit curious to the
senses--the axe feeling to work with a deal more dash and go than the
arm that directed it. At any rate, the exercise was pretty hard. Any
millionaire in want of an excellent, healthy, and expensive exercise
should try chopping his way through the sides of ships--it will do him
a world of good, and will be as expensive as anybody could possibly
desire. After a while I found I had well started a plank, and, once
through, chopping away round the hole was not so difficult. Still, when
I had a hole big enough to get through, I did not feel by any means as
fresh as I had done when first that horrible copper pot was screwed
down over my head.
I squeezed through the hole, and at the first step I had ever made on
the real sea-bottom, I fell a savage and complicated cropper over my
communication-cord. I got up, but, as I stepped clear of the cord, a
frightful conviction seized my mind that I was a bigger fool than I
had ever given myself credit for being. What in the world was the good
of getting out through the side of the vessel when that communication
cord--my only means of signalling--and that air-pipe--my only means
of submarine life--led up through the boat itself and among those
execrated oil-barrels? Awful! Awful! I sat down helplessly on a broken
rock and stared blankly through my windows. To weep would have been
mere bravado, with so much salt water already about me. I tried to
signal with the communication-cord, but it was caught somewhere in that
congregation of oil-barrels. It seemed to be all up, except myself,
who was all down, with no prospect of ever rising in the world again.
Shadowy forms came and went in the water about me, and I speculated
desperately in how long or how short a time these sea-creatures
would be having a dinner-party, with _me_ as the chief attraction. I
wondered, casually, whether the india-rubber would agree with them, and
hoped that it would not. Then I wondered what they would take for the
indigestion, and I thought they would probably take each other--it's
their way, I believe. I was wandering on in this way, and had just
feebly recollected that there was four pounds eight and something in my
pockets above, which was a pity, because I might have spent it first,
and that I owed my landlady fifteen-and-six, which was a good job,
because it would compensate for that claret she said the cat drank,
when an inspiration seized me--a great inspiration. I should probably
have called out "Eureka!" as did the venerable discoverer of that
principle of specific gravity that had lately (literally) taken a rise
out of me, if I had thought of it, but I didn't, which was fortunate,
because it is rather a chestnut after all.
[Illustration: "AWFUL!"]
This was my notion--a desperate one, but still one with hope in it.
I would shut off the air-escape valve on my helmet, so that the air
being pumped in would inflate my india-rubber dress like a bladder.
Then I would cut my air-pipe and communication cord, stuffing the pipe
and tying it as best I might, take off my leaden shoes and rise to the
surface triumphantly, like an air-cushion, or, say, an oil barrel.
Specific gravity having taken a rise--all the rise--out of me, I would
proceed to take a rise out of specific gravity; a great, glorious, and
effective rise to the upper world. No office-boy on promotion ever
looked forward to his rise with more hope than I to mine. It was a
desperate expedient certainly, but what else to do?
[Illustration: "I TOOK OFF ONE LEADEN SHOE."]
I took off one leaden shoe and loosened the other, ready to kick away.
I shut the escape-valve. I cut the cord with my axe on the rock I had
been sitting on, and then, when the air had blown out my dress to most
corpulent proportions, I took the decisive stroke. I chopped through
the air-pipe. I stuffed it as well as possible and tied it in some sort
of a knot--it was _very_ stiff--in a great hurry, and then--I kicked
off the leaden shoe.
Never, never, never--even if I live on Jupiter after this planet is
blown to shivers--shall I forget the result of my forlorn-hope dodge.
I kicked off the shoe, as I have said, and, in an instant, the whole
universe of waters turned upside down and swirled away beyond my head.
In sober fact, _I_ had turned upside down--as I might have known I
should do, if only I hadn't been a bigger fool than ever.
[Illustration: "I HAD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN."]
Of course, the moment my leaden shoes went, _down_ came my copper
head-pot, being my heaviest part, and up went my feet. I had a pretty
quick rise, certainly, but I prefer not to recall my feelings during
the rush. I can quite understand now why a rise in the world makes some
people giddy. All that I had before felt of amazement and horror, I now
felt multiplied by fifty and squeezed into about two seconds, so that
they felt like ten hours. Up through that awful water and those moving
shadows I went, feeling that I was in reality held still, like a man in
a nightmare. When at last I stopped, I felt that it was but a matter
of moments, and the air would leak away through that cut tube, and I
should go down again, still head under, for the last time, to die in
that grisly combination of mackintosh and copper kettle; also I felt
choking, stifling, when--something had me roughly by the ankle, and I
was dragged, a wretched rag of misplaced ambition, into a boat. The
appearance of my legs sticking out above water had, it seemed, caused
intense amusement among the boat's crew--a circumstance which probably
ought to have gratified me, although it didn't.
[Illustration]
I have little more to add, except that I shudder, to this day, whenever
I see an acrobat standing on his head, because it is so graphically
remindful. But, if anybody is thinking of going in for diving by way of
placid enjoyment, I shall be delighted to treat with him for the sale
and purchase of a most desirable diving-dress in unsoiled condition,
cut in the most fashionable style, with a fascinating copper helmet and
commodious collar, and a neat label for the chest. The shoes will not
be included in the bargain, having been inadvertently left in a damp
place.
_FROM BEHIND THE SPEAKER'S CHAIR._