rst 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