him and his companion. Then he looked at the
corpse, and, in a paroxysm of madness, struck the mattock into its white
bosom, accompanying his action with wild oaths. I expected every moment
that the next stroke would be on my own head, and sat in readiness to
seize the weapon, and, if possible, debilitated as I was, to wrench it
from his hands. My efforts to calm and pacify him were unavailing. I
pointed to the side of the bell, and, in broken accents, for I could yet
scarcely speak, told him to ring again; but he did not seem to
understand; giving me wild looks, showering broken oaths upon me, and
holding up the mattock in a threatening attitude, as if he would cleave
my head in twain.

During all this painful period the air was regularly supplied; but the
efforts of those on the lighter had not been able to raise us further.
In the midst of Vanderhoek's ravings, I thought I heard a sound above,
unlike that of the apparatus by which the bell was wrought. It was a
creaking, crashing sound, as if the bell were forcing up some heavy
piece of wood with which it was encumbered. The thought struck me
instantly that the cause of all our misfortunes lay in the drifting of
some large piece of the wreck over the top of the bell, which had got
entangled with the air-tubes and chain, and defied all the efforts of
the workmen to raise us. The creaking sound continued, and, mixing with
the whizzing of the air-tubes, the grating of the chain, and the
roarings and yells of Vanderhoek, made the scene more dismal than it had
yet been. I was in danger of my life--but momentarily redeemed, as it
were, from the precincts of eternity--every minute, from the fierceness
of the raving being beside me; and I could scarcely hope that all those
protracted efforts of the workmen would ever raise us from the immense
depth at which we were thus fixed by some great cause. I looked in the
placid face of the corpse, and wished that I were as far removed as her
spirit was from these complicated evils of the lower deep, and the
scarcely less remediable ills of the upper world. But I was soon roused
from my dark reverie: a louder crash than I had yet heard sounded over
the bell, and produced such an effect upon the excited mind of
Vanderhoek, that he roused his body suddenly, and struck a fierce blow
at me with the iron instrument he still held in his hand. He had
over-calculated his partially-recovered strength, and tumbled into the
sea alongside of the