Drowning

“ She felt the ground reel suddenly beneath her feet, and saw the gradual rising of a misty darkness that shut out the world, and closed about her like the silent waters through which a drowning man goes down to death. ”

“ I now lay quite becalmed, and began to feel that a man can die of cold as well as of drowning. The shores of Earraid were close in; I could see in the moonlight the dots of heather and the sparkling of the mica in the rocks. ”

“ All the females, as they beheld the sad spectacle, uttered a cry of horror, and they fancied that they could hear, amid the howling of the storm, the despairing shrieks of the drowning mariners, and could distinguish, among the foam, their dying forms, with their arms stretched out, in their agony, for assistance, where none could come. ”

“ It is conceivable to us all that the drowning man may, as is recorded, see his whole life, in all its minute details, presented to him, as in clear vision, in one instant of time, as he lapses into death. Well,—something like both these experiences is that of extreme and dissolving pain, to a certain order of minds. The vision and the attestation are present, without the horrors caused, amidst an earthquake, by the misery of a perishing multitude, though at the cost of more bodily anguish than in the case of the drowning man. ”

“ In the time that elapsed between that one momentary glimpse of Knockcalltecrore and our arrival at the foot of the boreen a whole lifetime seemed to me to have elapsed, and in my thoughts and harrowing anxieties I recalled—as drowning men are said to do before death—every moment, every experience since I had first come within sight of the western sea. ”

“ A strong wind was carrying the junk rapidly forward in spite of a steady current in the opposite direction, and the low-lying, shrubless shore afforded no landmark to indicate how far we had left the drowning man behind.
I instantly let down the sail and leapt overboard in the hope of finding him. Unsuccessful, I looked around in agonising suspense, and saw close to me a fishing-boat with a peculiar drag-net furnished with hooks, which I knew would bring him up.
"Come!" I cried, as hope revived in my heart. "Come and drag over this spot directly; a man is drowning just here!" ”

“ The boats had pulled hurriedly away lest they be swamped, and just as I hit the water I heard the men in the port boat shout encouragement. Then came a suction that was like the clutch of a million tiny hands dragging me under, and I knew that the ship was taking her final plunge. I caught my breath, held it, and swam with frenzied upper strokes as I felt myself going down, ever deeper and deeper. It is possible for a man to live a very long time in a very few seconds! And a man drowning, I am convinced, uses both lobes of his brain for one of the few times in his life. ”

“ I felt as a drowning man might feel who, admitting the fact that the water has got the master of him, lets that primary incident take care of itself, and looks only to some object by whose aid he may relieve himself from the desperate catastrophe. ”

“ Sometimes the danger seemed imminent, for to the loud words and cries of the men a sudden silence would succeed, while floods of water would pour over the sides, and threaten them with instant drowning. ”

“ By CLEMENT SCOTT. I HAVE often heard it said, that a drowning man, before he sinks, never to rise again in this world, sees mirrored instantly in the dreamy mist, the dramatic moments and episodes of his life. ”

“ Half-riddles, answerless, the more intense!—
Lost bars of music tinkling with no sense
Recur, drowning uneasy superstition.
Mouth open, he was lying, this sick man,
And sinking all the while; how had he come
To sink? On better nights his dream went flying,
Dipping, sailing the pasture of his sleep,
But now, since clock and cock, had sunk him down
Through mattress, bed, floor, floors beneath, stairs, cellars,
Through deep foundations of the manse; still sinking
Through unturned earth. ”

“ Thus it may be that what we cannot explain may find its explanation in time. 'Life is lost,' cries Uncle Vanya, 'Life is done for,' repeat the voices of girls innocently perishing—yet nothing is lost. The very horror which a drowning man experiences goes to show that the drowning is nothing final. It is only the beginning of greater events. ”

“ It is said that drowning is the easiest of deaths, but those who have recovered from a state nearly approaching actual death by submersion in the water, describe the sensations of recovery to consciousness to be beyond description, painful and terrible. ”

“ I was desperately in need of air, and knew that if I hit a boat for the third time I should never see the surface again. Drowning is a horrible death, notwithstanding all that has been said to the contrary. My past life never occurred to my mind, but I thought of many trivial things that I might not do or see again if I were drowned. I swam up in a slanting direction, hoping to avoid the boat that I had struck. ”

“ Yet there is nothing in reality more terrible in drowning than in any other kind of death; and a sailor will look upon it, I daresay, with precisely the same degree of indifference which a soldier experiences when he contemplates the prospect of his own dissolution by fire or steel. ”

“ Anyhow he fell on my head, and we commenced a mad career down the way we had ascended, rather rolling than falling, striking our heads and backs against the rocks, and apparently destined for the stony valley upon which we had looked down between our legs for hours. People who have escaped drowning say that, in what was their struggle for life, their minds travelled back over their whole history. ”

“ He proceeded to buckle on the jacket, apparently oblivious of a look which to a thinner-skinned man would have made drowning seem an easy death, and scrambled over the rocks to the water's edge. He poised himself upon a convenient taking-off place. ”

“ I can show you. I will prove it to you. Death by drowning is a peaceful slumber, a quiet drifting away."
"Is it?" I said, with a pretense of eagerness. I feared to get up for I felt the first move might result in my burial beneath the angry sea.
"You know, tell me about it. Explain it to me," I gasped, a feeling of coldness creeping over me as I realized that I was alone with what for the time was a mad man. Just as he began to speak I saw the chief officer come on deck and slowly advance towards me. ”

“ A charming fiction ascribes to him a tender solicitude for drowning persons, especially children; but history may be searched in vain for a single authentic proof—and history is not over-scrupulous in the matter of veracity. Every one has heard and read of rescues from drowning, by Newfoundland dogs, but no human being ever saw one. ”

“ He’s committed suicide! No, he’s swimming.” Certainly I was swimming. It’s not so easy for a swimmer like me to commit suicide by drowning. I landed on the nearest islet before the boat left the ship’s side. I heard them pulling about in the dark, hailing, and so on, but after a bit they gave up. Everything quieted down and the anchorage became as still as death. ”

“ And that man-drowning tank we was in lies a thousand fathoms deep to the west of Volcano.'
He didn't speak for a while, and when he did his voice was calmer.
'Don't think, sir, that I'd ha' complained of the common fortunes of the sea. Men are drowned, they go overboard, silent it may be, or they drop from aloft howling awful, and in the smother of a wreck when the sea's a wild beast, it's the lot of men to go. I've seen fire at sea, sir, and death in many shapes, sudden and slow, killing and fever. ”

“ Such is all that my memory has preserved of the sensations I experienced in drowning--a death generally considered a very dreadful one, but which is, in reality, anything but painful. We have no means of judging what is suffered in almost any other manner of passing from the world ”

“ To be thrown into a mass or bed of perfect dust, where the eyes are blinded by it, the ears stopped, and the mouth and lungs filled at the very first attempt to respire after having been thrown into it - what a horrible idea of suffocation and drowning! ”

“ As for drowning, many people who have been in a condition of suspended animation owing to submersion in the water have been allowed to die who might have been resuscitated had those present known how. ”

“ I WISH to show how drowning might, under ordinary circumstances, be avoided, even in the case of persons otherwise wholly ignorant of what is called the art of swimming. The numerous frightful casualties render every working suggestion of importance, and that which I here offer I venture to think is entirely available. ”

“ Quick, boys!–An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime...
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. ”

“ If we do not choose the knives, which are already sharpened for our throats, death by drowning is certain. So, finding ourselves face to face with the inevitable, we turn to the right bank upon the savages, who are in the woods and on the water. ”

“ After bringing a drowning person ashore your work is only half done; the main thing is to bring him back to life should he be unconscious. There are several methods for resuscitating the apparently drowned. ”

“ You see, then, how death is caused in drowning; the air is shut out by the water, and the blood is not changed in the lungs; so the blood goes back to the heart dark instead of red, and is sent all over the body. ”

“ Even to an experienced swimmer and diver, like our friend, the task of saving a drowning person is not easy, and the grip and grapple of some of those whom he rescued, had well nigh proved a fatal embrace, and it was only by the utmost coolness, skill, bravery, and self-control that he escaped. ”

“ In the first place, it is to be remarked that persons who have come so near drowning as to be unconscious when taken from the water, and so must have passed through all the suffering that attends death by drowning, say that they remember no feeling of pain whatever. ”

“ A man who has just escaped drowning may be excused from fearing to trust himself, five minutes after, to the water again. But, feeling a chill come over my body, and apprehensive lest by further exposing myself to the air I should bring on a cramp, I nerved myself for the plunge, and, shutting my eyes and setting my teeth, I sprang into the water. Once in, all fear left me, and I struck out boldly, and, aided by the current, soon reached the opposite shore.
My feelings on finding myself in safety on the Sandy 165 Point side of the river may be imagined. ”

“ The catastrophe of drowning is usually referrible to nervous agitation, and to spasmodic and ill-directed efforts in the extremities. All swimmers have a vivid recollection of the great difficulty experienced in keeping themselves afloat, when they first resorted to aquatic exercises and amusements. In especial they remember the short, vigorous, but flurried, misdirected, and consequently futile strokes which, instead of enabling them to skim the surface, conducted them inevitably to the bottom. ”

“ If I have unjustly wrested a plank from a drowning man, I must restore it to him though I drown myself. ”

“ So that, in drowning, we have reason to believe, contrary to Taylor's opinion, that pure, uncomplicated asphyxia never occurs.
If death by drowning be inevitable, as in a shipwreck, the easiest way to die would be to suck water into the lungs by a powerful inspiration, as soon as one went beneath the surface. A person who had the courage to do this would probably become almost immediately unconscious, and never rise to the surface. ”

“ Those who have been near death from drowning, and afterward restored to consciousness, assert that the dying suffer but little pain. Captain Marry at states that his sensations at one time when nearly drowned were rather pleasant than otherwise. ”

“ If he be clutched round the neck he must take a deep breath and lean well over the drowning person, at the same time placing one hand in the small of his back, then raise the other arm in line with the shoulder, and pass it over the drowning person’s arm, then pinch the nostrils close with the fingers, and at the same time place the palm of the hand on the chin and push away with all possible force. ”

“ Fourthly, how to save life.
[Practise these at swimming baths or bathing parade.]
A moderate swimmer can save a drowning man if he knows how, and has practised it a few times with his friends. The popular idea that a drowning person rises three times before he finally sinks is all nonsense. He often drowns at once, unless someone is quick to help him. The important point is not to let the drowning person catch hold of you, or he will probably drown you too. Keep behind him always. If you find yourself clutched by the wrist, turn your wrist against his thumb, and force yourself free. ”

“ What may be done if the drowning person keeps still? What, if he becomes frantic?
How often does a drowning person generally rise? How long after drowning has a person been resuscitated or brought back to life? ”

“ Death by drowning may be a merciful mode of execution, but I do not think any condemned person can look with composure upon death in any form. For my part I took a sudden aversion to water, although I had always loved it before.
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First we drew up before the royal barge, in which sat the young king upon a high seat. Around this place, and indeed all around the clear space in the bay, were clustered hundreds of boats, so densely packed that their sides touched. Every boat had as many passengers as it would hold, but the natives were quiet and no shouts nor jeering did I hear. ”

“ Should the rescue be close to shore, swim behind the person and help by pushing him in toward shallow water. Should the drowning person have sunk for the third time watch when the air-bubbles rise to the surface. At once dive down perpendicular to the bottom when the air-bubbles show, seize the drowning person and bring him to the surface by pushing off from the bottom and using your legs to send you upward to the surface. ”