--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