Chapter 6

At last, I was called to take my seat in the bell. One of the men came out to make room for me; but, before I entered, the crane was swung round to the west side of the lighter, as the men reported that a more likely field of investigation lay in that direction, where they had observed a bright body which they took for a mass of glittering specie, probably rolled out of the packages, and lying there from its greater specific gravity. On mounting up into the bell, where the two remaining workmen were refreshing themselves with brandy to recover the play of the lungs, which, in the last descent, had suffered from a deficiency of oxygen, I felt a creeping sensation pass over me, in spite of my efforts to be calm and firm. This I attributed to the already excited state of my fancy, from the long train of musings I had indulged in over the green deep. In my ascent with the aeronaut, I experienced a sensation in some degree similar to that feeling of lofty awe which accompanies the expectation of the grand impulse of sublimity--[Greek: ton sphodron kai enthousiastikon pathos]; but now the action of the heart seemed tending towards a collapse rather than a swell: I felt already the chilling effect of the cold element before I had descended into its womb. I looked round me with a nervous eye, and threw the colours of my fancy on even common objects. The dull yolks of glass placed round the sides to give light, pale and lustreless--the iron tools, wet and brown with rust--the black leather flasks of spirits--the big hammer used for signals of distress--were all strange and invested with new characters; and the two men, Jenkins, an Englishman, and Vanderhoek, a German, with sallow countenances, rendered paler than usual by the effects of the confined air, seemed rather to belong to the watery element from which they had emerged, than to the fair and smiling earth. I attempted to look unconcernedly; but the German, as he was lifting his flask to his head, scanned me with a ludicrous gaze, and, whether it was that the brandy had, in some degree, inclined him to a merriment that in my eyes seemed like the grin of a demon, or that he wished to let me hear the _ringing_ sound of the bell when the human voice echoed within it, I know not; but he accompanied his potations with a stanza of Burger's famous Zechlied:--

"Ich will einst, bei ja und nein Vor dem Zapfen sterben Alles, meinen Wein nur nicht Lass' Ich frohen erben."

And, finishing the verse, he looked again at me, to notice the effect produced on me by the reverberation of the tones, which, reflected from all sides, mixed as it were in the middle, and loaded the ear with a confused ringing noise, similar to what I once heard when nearly drowned in the Thames. If the man had had any intention to increase my alarm, he could not have taken a more effectual way of compassing his intention; for his language--the true and natural diction of spirits--responded to by the confused ringing echoes of the bell, and acting upon a mind already enervated by the weight of the genius of superstition, appeared to be all that was necessary to complete the alarm which I in vain attempted to conceal.

"All ready, Vanderhoek?" cried Mr W----.

"Ja, ja, herr," responded Vanderhoek. "Pull away, Crane-meistern."

And as the men began to work, he dashed carelessly into another stanza of his favourite ballad. I know not if you are acquainted with German; but I cannot resist the desire of gratifying my own ears with a repetition of the sounds of the thrilling consonants which produced so great an effect on me on that occasion. His voice was rough and guttural:--

"Wann der Wein in Himmelsclang, Wandelt mein Geklimper, Sind Homer, and Ossian, Gegen mich nur Stumper."

I would have called out to the man to cease his singing, had I not been afraid of being set down for a coward. The continued sound within prevented me from observing the motion of the bell, as it gradually swung off the deck; but the increasing novelty of my situation, as I saw myself suspended over the calm sea into which I was immediately to be plunged, fixed my attention, while it increased my nervousness. I would now have retreated, had it been in my power. The calculated knowledge of the process of submersion, and of my absolute safety under the laws of hydraulics, lost so much of its power under the reigning influence of the natural instinctive horror of being plunged into the womb of the ocean, that I thought myself on the eve of being drowned; and the same feeling I had experienced when struggling half-dead with the waters of the Thames took hold of me by anticipation. Meanwhile, the German started broken snatches of his song; the bell was gradually descending; the space of pure light between the rim and the green surface of the sea was growing every minute less and less. It was upon that decreasing circle of air that my eye was most intensely fixed; it grew brighter as the inside of the bell grew darker, till in a moment it appeared like a bright line of gold-coloured light.

"There," said Jenkins to me, in a loud tone. "That is the last glimpse. This is the most trying moment for inexperienced divers, when the last beam of day is extinguished."

I could not reply to him. The circle had disappeared; the water was 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.