ead sank down into the
weeds and blackness that lay about the mast. I suppose nobody, not the
most cautious chap in the world, would have bothered about a look-out at
such a desolate place. It stunk of solitude.

"Of course you must understand that I was a greenhorn at diving. None of
us were divers. We'd had to muck about with the thing to get the way of
it, and this was the first time I'd been deep. It feels damnable. Your
ears hurt beastly. I don't know if you've ever hurt yourself yawning or
sneezing, but it takes you like that, only ten times worse. And a pain
over the eyebrows here--splitting--and a feeling like influenza in the
head. And it isn't all heaven in your lungs and things. And going down
feels like the beginning of a lift, only it keeps on. And you can't turn
your head to see what's above you, and you can't get a fair squint at
what's happening to your feet without bending down something painful. And
being deep it was dark, let alone the blackness of the ashes and mud that
formed the bottom. It was like going down out of the dawn back into the
night, so to speak.

"The mast came up like a ghost out of the black, and then a lot of fishes,
and then a lot of flapping red seaweed, and then whack I came with a kind
of dull bang on the deck of the _Ocean Pioneer_, and the fishes that
had been feeding on the dead rose about me like a swarm of flies from road
stuff in summer-time. I turned on the compressed air again--for the suit
was a bit thick and mackintoshery after all, in spite of the rum--and
stood recovering myself. It struck coolish down there, and that helped
take off the stuffiness a bit."

"When I began to feel easier, I started looking about me. It was an
extraordinary sight. Even the light was extraordinary, a kind of
reddy-coloured twilight, on account of the streamers of seaweed that
floated up on either side of the ship. And far overhead just a moony,
deep green blue. The deck of the ship, except for a slight list to
starboard, was level, and lay all dark and long between the weeds, clear
except where the masts had snapped when she rolled, and vanishing into
black night towards the forecastle. There wasn't any dead on the decks,
most were in the weeds alongside, I suppose; but afterwards I found two
skeletons lying in the passengers' cabins, where death had come to them.
It was curious to stand on that deck and recognise it all, bit by bit; a
place against the rail where I'd been fond of smok