“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 smoking by starlight, and the corner where an old chap from Sydney used to flirt with a widow we had aboard.  A comfortable couple they’d been, only a month ago, and now you couldn’t have got a meal for a baby crab off either of them.

“I’ve always had a bit of a philosophical turn, and I daresay I spent the best part of five minutes in such thoughts before I went below to find where the blessed dust was stored.  It was slow work hunting, feeling it was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing blue gleams down the companion.  And there were things moving about, a dab at my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg.  Crabs, I expect.  I kicked a lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, and stooped and picked up something all knobs and spikes.  What do you think?  Backbone!  But I never had any particular feeling for bones.  We had talked the affair over pretty thoroughly, and Always knew just where the stuff was stowed.  I found it that trip.  I lifted a box one end an inch or more.”