Sinking

“ Of course a man would drown just as easily in a couple of fathoms of water as in this deep place; but it is perfectly horrible to think of sinking down, down, down into the very deepest water-hole on the face of the whole earth. ”

“ The great force of the ship’s sinking was unaided by any violence of the elements, and the suction, into so great as had been feared, rocked but mildly the group of boats now a quarter of a mile distant from it.
Sixteen boats were in the forlorn procession which entered on the terrible hours of rowing, drifting and suspense. Women wept for lost husbands and sons. Sailors sobbed for the ship which had been their pride. Men chocked back tears and sought to comfort the widowed. ”

“ You could feel the boat sink, sink,--down, down,--would it never get to the bottom? The water came flush up to the lower deck, and then,--thank heaven,--the sinking stopped and there was the Mariposa Belle safe and tight on a reed bank.
Really, it made one positively laugh! It seemed so queer and, anyway, if a man has a sort of natural courage, danger makes him laugh. Danger! pshaw! fiddlesticks! everybody scouted the idea. Why, it is just the little things like this that give zest to a day on the water. ”

“ There was apparently no chance for launching a small boat. The scud flew fast and the gray wind-swept ocean looked ugly enough, the surface covered with white. The steamer was slowly sinking, like ourselves, and [Pg 85] it was only a question whether either would go through the day or not. I hoped that it would not come in the night. There's something peculiarly nerve-racking in wild night work in a sinking ship. The very absence of light lends terror to the already awful situation, and the wild rush of the wind and seas makes chaos of the blackness about. ”

“ The sick man laboriously closed his eyes again; and it seemed to him that he sank away very slowly, into a great, downy abyss, lower and lower, a very depth of down, into which he sank and went on sinking, sank and went on sinking. ”

“ Darkness of slumber and death, forever sinking and sinking. ”

“ In the meantime, however, those upon the sinking ship, who knew that they had only a few hours at most to live, lived up to the most splendid example of Anglo-Saxon courage. As the ship sank lower those on board climbed higher, prolonging life to the last minute. Frenzied search was made of every part of the decks by those who hoped that the sailors had overlooked a life raft or small boat which might be used. ”

“ There is an exquisite pleasure in transporting the mind into such memories of the past when the body is in such surroundings as the present, if only I could will myself to dream of her!
A fine day in every sense of the word. The weather has been and remains excellent, and I have been present at my first sinking. It was absurdly commonplace. At 10 a.m. this morning a column of smoke crept upwards from the southern horizon.
Von Weissman steered towards it on the surface until two masts and the top of a funnel appeared. We dived and proceeded slowly under water on a southerly course. ”

“ Sinking, Rising, Springing or Bounds, Capers, Falling, Sliding, holding the Foot up, Pointing the Toes, placing the Heel, turning a quarter Turn, a half Turn, a three quarter Turn, and a whole Turn.
The Mark for a Sink, is a little Stroke inclining towards the little black Head.
A Sink.
The Mark for a Rise from a Sink, is when there is a little straight Stroke upon the Step. ”

“ One is left to guess at what particular stage the sinking process began, but if the earth’s crust were as readily deformed as the extreme views I have been examining would compel one to imply, then depression must have commenced almost immediately with the accumulation of snow and ice. ”

“ Also the exterior and outward shape or form makes some bodies more apt to sink then others; Indeed, the outward form and shape of Creatures is one of the chief causes of either sinking or swimming. But to conclude, water in its interior nature is of a mean or middle degree, as neither too rare, nor too grave a body; and for its exterior quality, it is in as high a degree for wetness, as fire is for heat; and being apt both to divide, and to unite, it can bear a burden, and devour a burden, so that some bodies may swim, and others sink ”

“ If the person in danger will keep still, when his friend seizes his hair or arm, he can readily be taken ashore. If a swimmer finds his sinking friend frantic, it may be necessary to strike him a violent blow between the eyes so as to stun him for a minute or two.
56A drowning person generally rises twice before sinking the last time. Those who have been unconscious ten, fifteen, twenty minutes and sometimes longer, have been resuscitated or brought back to life. ”

“ When men's spirits are sinking every thing helps to sink them. ”

“ Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; ”

“ The course of water flowing underground is not strictly analogous to that of rivers on the surface, there being, in the one case, a constant descent from a higher to a lower level from the source of the stream to the sea; whereas, in the other, the water may at one time sink far below the level of the ocean, and afterwards rise again high above it. ”

“ As is well known by those who have charge of such operations, in well boring innumerable accidents and stoppages occur from causes which cannot be prevented, with however much vigilance and skill the operations may be conducted. Hard and soft strata intermingled, highly-inclined rocks, running sands, and fissures and dislocations are fruitful sources of annoyance and delay, and sometimes of complete failure ”

“ A great deal of the irregularity in the action of wells, and the consequent distrust with which they are regarded by many, is attributable either to improper situation or to the haphazard manner in which the search for underground water is frequently conducted. ”

“ It was like an outlying rock with the water boiling up, streaming over, pouring off, beating round--like a rock in the surf to which shipwrecked people cling before they let go--only it rose, it sank, it rolled continuously, without respite and rest, like a rock that should have miraculously struck adrift from a coast and gone wallowing upon the sea. ”

“ But the stream was starker, the spate was darker,
Than man might live and swim.
In, in, out and in,
Blaws the wind and whirls the whin.
The first ae step they strode therein,
It smote them foot and knee:
But ere they wan to the mid water
The spate was as the sea.
In, in, out and in,
Blaws the wind and whirls the whin.
But when they wan to the mid water,
It smote them hand and head:
And nae man knows but the wave that flows
Where they lie drowned and dead. ”

“ The ocean appeared a sea of molten fire. Rain—hail—dashed hissing by, and mid the screaming of the blast, and the torrents rushing from the skies, the huge [177] waves plunged, and roared, and lashed in milky whiteness, broke mast high upon these horrid rocks. While the fishermen in their cottages were thanking their stars that they were snug and safe on shore, we heard in the temporary lulls of the howling storm, signal guns of distress. ”

“ Then the sun would shine on its vast placid bosom and the breeze play gently, tempting the swimmer toward its borders and the light pleasure craft toward its depths. And then, in mid-afternoon, a sudden disastrous change; a quick gale from the north, with a wide whipping-up of white caps; and the morrow's newspapers told of bathers drowned in the undertow, of frail canoes dashed to pieces against piers and breakwaters, and of gay, beflagged steam-launches swamped by the newly-risen sea miles from shore: the toll of fickle, superheated August. ”

“ Perhaps, if the tide was heavy and at its flood, and a breaker heavier than the rest breached shorewards in a white wall of seething foam, and crashed and rattled together the loose coral slabs that marked the line of high-water mark, the silent, dreaming man would spring to his feet with a loud warning call. ”

“ Though the tide that feels the west wind lift it, wave by widening wave,
Wax not yet to height and fullness of the storm that smites to save,
None shall bid the flood back seaward till no bar be left to brave. ”

“ And with that he threw her into the river, and she sank once, and she sank twice, and just before she was about to sink for the third time she put her hand up into the air, out of the water, and made a motion with her first and middle finger as if she were moving the scissors. ”

“ There we stick fast upon the rough fact for a while, and the flood that was so smooth and pleasant rushes past us, foaming and seething and breaking against the boat's side and threatening to tear her to pieces. And if the tide is ebbing at the river's mouth, we may be left high and dry upon the sharp reality for a long time ”

“ Here accordingly the flood-tide—for this tide often retreats from the land and bursts back again over the beach coming on with a rush and roar—thrust them suddenly on to the innermost shore, and but little of the keel was left in the water. And they leapt forth from the ship, and sorrow seized them when they gazed on the mist and the levels of vast land stretching far like a mist and continuous into the distance; no spot for water, no path, no steading of herdsmen did they descry afar off, but all the scene was possessed by a dead calm. ”

“ The swirling flood. It is too late! Too late?
But love is swifter than the angry tide,
For like a mighty porpoise, wallowing in the wave,
The valiant hero leaps into the stream,
And holding Martha Waters in his strong right arm
High above the water, reaches shore
A hundred feet above the deadly precipice. ”

“ It is true that a wall of earth everywhere controls the flood to-day, and that the traveller in his boat does not see, as he would have seen two thousand years ago, the glint of water to the north and south at high tide over tufted grass and drowned banks of mud for miles upon either side of his going. ”

“ It leads to death—a wreck-strewn sea, dashing white up the black cliffs, and bubbling cries, rising above the tempest's roar and the surges' boom, as, one by one, the swimmers sink to darkness through the foam! ”

“ All other men were drowned. The waves pursued the one man as he climbed, rising higher and higher until they came to his knees, his waist, his breast. Hope was almost gone, and he felt that the next wave would launch him into the black ocean that raged about him, when one of the tamanouses of the peak, taking pity on him, turned his feet to stone. ”

“ Should a storm spring up,—even an ordinary gale,—not only would their canvas water-cask be bilged, and its contents spilled out to mingle with the briny billow, but their frail embarkation would be in danger of going to pieces, or of being whelmed fathoms deep under the frothing waves. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The sea comes creeping up, or else the wind raises great white breakers; if the waves are quiet, old breakwaters, long ago broken themselves, smashed fragments here and there of concrete protections put by man, gaps in the cliff and changes in the coast-line, remind us of the vast force behind the gentle and persistent lap of water. ”

“ About three weeks after Joe came to work for me, we sat at dinner one day. Low tide came at one-thirty—the end of a big flood. It had become my habit to watch those tides. The tremendous inrushings and outpourings fascinated me. And I, like other men, had seen strange and fearful things happen there. Once, indeed, the foolhardy skipper of a coastwise boat, with ninety lives under his hand, tried to buck through Hell Gate. He had a sixteen-knot-boat contempt for fast water, and a schedule of gulf ports to make. He fought tide and whirl and rip and eddy till he laid Skeleton Point abeam. ”

“ The tide is out, and venturous lads are stealing along the sharp low ranges of rock, slipping now and then with incautious steps into the little clear pools of sea-water which surround them; for their eyes are not on their own uncertain footing, but fixed, like the rest, on that visible danger up the Firth, in which all feel themselves concerned. ”

“ And those high crags well known for Sciron's crime;
No longer can be seen that land whose shores
Are washed by double seas. While in amaze 1025
We look in fear and wonder, suddenly
The whole sea bellows, and on every side
The towering cliffs re-echo with the roar;
While all their tops the leaping spray bedews.
The deep spouts forth and vomits up its waves
In alternating streams, like some huge whale 1030
Which roves the ocean, spouting up the floods. ”

“ We see it afar off like the meeting of a hundred streams that grow into a river. We are sailing on the flood long after it has shrunk into a single tide, and the banks are dull and tame, and the all-absorbing ocean is before us. ”

“ No break had occurred, not even a pause of ten minutes—rain, rain, rain, till people became as accustomed to the continuous fall upon their roofs of zinc or thatch as to the ticking of a clock—and the parched earth, now thoroughly soft and moistened, ran off the superfluous water in streams from every runnel and gully, which emptying themselves into the larger rivers, these in their turn came down in such force as to flood their banks, doing much and serious damage. ”

“ A third ravine was split through the rock, and this time the earth's crust cracked away to the eastward, giving outlet to the sea, which came pouring through the canon, breaking rocks from mountains and grinding them to powder in its terrific progress. Gasping with fatigue, the unhappy one toiled up a hill and surveyed his work with satisfaction, for the flood engulfed the fiend men and they left no member of their race behind them. ”