down into it. The surface glistened just like a skin--it might have
been empty space underneath for all I could tell to the contrary. Very
slowly, for I rode slanting into it, the water crept up to my eyes. Then I
went under and the skin seemed to break and heal again about my eyes. The
moon gave a jump up in the sky and grew green and dim, and fish, faintly
glowing, came darting round me--and things that seemed made of luminous
glass; and I passed through a tangle of seaweeds that shone with an oily
lustre. And so I drove down into the sea, and the stars went out one by
one, and the moon grew greener and darker, and the seaweed became a
luminous purple-red. It was all very faint and mysterious, and everything
seemed to quiver. And all the while I could hear the wheels of the
Bath-chair creaking, and the footsteps of people going by, and a man in
the distance selling the special _Pall Mall_.

"I kept sinking down deeper and deeper into the water. It became inky
black about me, not a ray from above came down into that darkness, and the
phosphorescent things grew brighter and brighter. The snaky branches of
the deeper weeds flickered like the flames of spirit-lamps; but, after a
time, there were no more weeds. The fishes came staring and gaping towards
me, and into me and through me. I never imagined such fishes before. They
had lines of fire along the sides of them as though they had been outlined
with a luminous pencil. And there was a ghastly thing swimming backwards
with a lot of twining arms. And then I saw, coming very slowly towards me
through the gloom, a hazy mass of light that resolved itself as it drew
nearer into multitudes of fishes, struggling and darting round something
that drifted. I drove on straight towards it, and presently I saw in the
midst of the tumult, and by the light of the fish, a bit of splintered
spar looming over me, and a dark hull tilting over, and some glowing
phosphorescent forms that were shaken and writhed as the fish bit at them.
Then it was I began to try to attract Widgery's attention. A horror came
upon me. Ugh! I should have driven right into those half-eaten--things. If
your sister had not come! They had great holes in them, Bellows, and ...
Never mind. But it was ghastly!"

IV.

For three weeks Davidson remained in this singular state, seeing what at
the time we imagined was an altogether phantasmal world, and stone blind
to the world around him. Then, one Tuesday, when I ca