Harper's Young People, December 30, 1879 Part 4

Perhaps only the topmasts of the wreck are visible when they reach it; but even though she is quite out of sight, she is not given up, if the sea is calm and the wind favorable. One of the men puts a diving dress over his suit of heavy flannels. The trousers and jacket are made of India rubber cloth, fitting close to the ankles, wrists, and across the chest, which is further protected by a breastplate. A copper helmet with a gla.s.s face is used for covering the head, and is screwed on to the breastplate. One end of a coil of strong rubber tubing is attached to the back of the helmet, to the outside of which a running cord is also attached, and continued down the side of the dress to the diver's right hand, where he can use it for signaling his a.s.sistants when he is beneath the surface. His boots have leaden soles weighing about twenty-eight pounds; and as this, with the helmet, is insufficient to allow his descent, four blocks of lead, weighing fifty pounds, are slung over his shoulders; and a water-proof bag containing a hammer, a chisel, and a dirk-knife is fastened over his breast.

He is transferred from the steamer that has brought him from the city to a small boat, which is rowed to a spot over the wreck, and a short iron ladder is put over the side, down which he steps; and when the last rung is reached, he lets go, and the water bubbles and sparkles over his head as he sinks deeper and deeper.

The immersion of the diver is more thrilling to a spectator than it is to him. The rubber coil attached to his helmet at one end is attached at the other to an air-pump, which sends him all the breath he needs, and if the supply is irregular, a pull at the cord by his right hand secures its adjustment. He is not timid, and he knows that the only thing he has to guard against is nervousness, by which he might lose his presence of mind. The fish dart away from him at a motion of his hand, and even a shark is terrified by the apparition of his strange globular helmet. He is careful not to approach the wreck too suddenly, as the tangled rigging and splinters might twist or break the air-pipe and signal line; when his feet touch the bottom, he looks behind, before, and above him before he advances an inch.

Looming up before him like a phantom in the foggy light is the ship; and now, perhaps, if any of the crew have gone down with her, the diver feels a momentary horror; but if no one has been lost, he sets about his work, and hums a cheerful tune.

It may be that the vessel has settled low in the sand, that she is broken in two, or that the hole in her bottom can not be repaired. But we will suppose that the circ.u.mstances are favorable, that the sand is firm, and the hull in an easy position.

The diver signals to be hauled up, makes his report, and in his next descent he is accompanied by several others, who help him to drag ma.s.sive chains of iron underneath the ship, at the bow, at the stern, and in the middle. This is a tedious and exhausting operation, which sometimes takes many days; and when it is completed, the pontoons are towed into position at each side of the ship.

The pontoons, simply described, are hollow floats. They are oblong, built of wood, and possess great buoyancy. Some of them are over a hundred feet long, eighteen feet wide, and fourteen feet deep; but their size, and the number of them used, depend on the length of the vessel that is to be raised. Circular tubes, or wells, extend through them; and when the chains are secured underneath the ship, the ends are inserted in these wells by the divers, and drawn up through them by hydraulic power. The chains thus form a series of loops like the common swing of the playground, in which the ship rests; and as they are shortened in being drawn up through the wells, the ship lifts. The ship lifts if all be well--if the chains do not part, or some other accident occur; but the wreckers need great patience, and sometimes they see the labor of weeks undone in a minute.

We are presupposing success, however, and instead of sinking or capsizing, the ship appears above the bubbling water, and between the pontoons, which groan and tremble with her weight.

As soon as her decks are above water, so much of the cargo is removed as is necessary to enable the divers to reach the broken part of the hull, which they patch with boards and canvas if she is built of wood, or with iron plates if she is of iron. This is the most perilous part of the diver's work, as there are so many projections upon which his air-tube may catch; but he finds it almost as easy to ply his hammer and drill in making repairs under water as on sh.o.r.e.

The ship is next pumped out, and borne between the pontoons by powerful tugs to the nearest dry-dock, where all the damages are finally repaired, and in a month or two she is once more afloat, with nothing to indicate her narrow escape.

[Begun in No. 5 of HARPER'S YOUNG PEOPLE, December 2.]

THE HISTORY OF PHOTOGEN AND NYCTERIS.

A Day and Night Mahrchen.

BY GEORGE MACDONALD.

XVI.--AN EVIL NURSE.

Watho was herself ill, as I have said, and was the worse tempered; and, besides, it is a peculiarity of witches that what works in others to sympathy, works in them to repulsion. Also, Watho had a poor, helpless, rudimentary spleen of a conscience left, just enough to make her uncomfortable, and therefore more wicked. So when she heard that Photogen was ill she was angry. Ill, indeed! after all she had done to saturate him with the life of the system, with the solar might itself!

He was a wretched failure, the boy! And because he was _her_ failure, she was annoyed with him, began to dislike him, grew to hate him. She looked on him as a painter might upon a picture, or a poet upon a poem, which he had only succeeded in getting into an irrecoverable mess. In the hearts of witches love and hate lie close together, and often tumble over each other. And whether it was that her failure with Photogen foiled also her plans in regard to Nycteris, or that her illness made her yet more of a devil's wife, certainly Watho now got sick of the girl too, and hated to have her about the castle.

She was not too ill, however, to go to poor Photogen's room and torment him. She told him she hated him like a serpent, and hissed like one as she said it, looking very sharp in the nose and chin, and flat in the forehead. Photogen thought she meant to kill him, and hardly ventured to take anything brought him. She ordered every ray of light to be shut out of his room; but by means of this he got a little used to the darkness.

She would take one of his arrows, and now tickle him with the feather end of it, now p.r.i.c.k him with the point till the blood ran down. What she meant finally I can not tell, but she brought Photogen speedily to the determination of making his escape from the castle: what he should do then he would think afterward. Who could tell but he might find his mother somewhere beyond the forest! If it were not for the broad patches of darkness that divided day from day, he would fear nothing!

But now, as he lay helpless in the dark, ever and anon would come dawning through it the face of the lovely creature who on that first awful night nursed him so sweetly: was he never to see her again? If she was, as he had concluded, the nymph of the river, why had she not re-appeared? She might have taught him not to fear the night, for plainly she had no fear of it herself! But then, when the day came, she did seem frightened: why was that, seeing there was nothing to be afraid of then? Perhaps one so much at home in the darkness was correspondingly afraid of the light! Then his selfish joy at the rising of the sun, blinding him to her condition, had made him behave to her, in ill return for her kindness, as cruelly as Watho behaved to him! How sweet and dear and lovely she was! If there were wild beasts that came out only at night, and were afraid of the light, why should there not be girls too, made the same way--who could not endure the light, as he could not bear the darkness? If only he could find her again! Ah, how differently he would behave to her! But alas! perhaps the sun had killed her--melted her--burned her up!--dried her up: that was it, if she was the nymph of the river.

XVII.--WATHO'S WOLF.

From that dreadful morning Nycteris had never got to be herself again.

The sudden light had been almost death to her; and now she lay in the dark with the memory of a terrific sharpness--a something she dared scarcely recall, lest the very thought of it should sting her beyond endurance. But this was as nothing to the pain which the recollection of the rudeness of the shining creature whom she had nursed through his fear caused her; for the moment his suffering pa.s.sed over to her, and he was free, the first use he made of his returning strength had been to scorn her! She wondered and wondered; it was all beyond her comprehension.

Before long, Watho was plotting evil against her. The witch was like a sick child weary of his toy: she would pull her to pieces, and see how she liked it. She would set her in the sun, and see her die, like a jelly-fish from the salt ocean cast out on a hot rock. It would be a sight to soothe her wolf-pain. One day, therefore, a little before noon, while Nycteris was in her deepest sleep, she had a darkened litter brought to the door, and in that she made two of her men carry her to the plain above. There they took her out, laid her on the gra.s.s, and left her.

Watho watched it all from the top of her high tower, through her telescope; and scarcely was Nycteris left, when she saw her sit up, and the same moment cast herself down again with her face to the ground.

"She'll have a sun-stroke," said Watho, "and that'll be the end of her."

Presently, tormented by a fly, a huge-humped buffalo, with great s.h.a.ggy mane, came galloping along, straight for where she lay. At sight of the thing on the gra.s.s he started, swerved yards aside, stopped dead, and then came slowly up, looking malicious. Nycteris lay quite still, and never even saw the animal.

"Now she'll be trodden to death!" said Watho.

When the buffalo reached her, he sniffed at her all over, and went away; then came back and sniffed again; then all at once went off as if a demon had him by the tail.

Next came a gnu, then a gaunt wild boar. But no creature hurt her, and Watho was angry with the whole creation.

At length, in the shade of her hair, the blue eyes of Nycteris began to come to themselves a little, and the first thing they saw was a comfort.

I have told already how she knew the night daisies, each a sharp-pointed little cone with a red tip; and once she had parted the rays of one of them, with trembling fingers, for she was afraid she was dreadfully rude, and perhaps was hurting it; but she did want, she said to herself, to see what secret it carried so carefully hidden; and she found its golden heart. But now, right under her eyes, inside the veil of her hair, in the sweet twilight of whose blackness she could see it perfectly, stood a daisy with its red tip opened wide into a carmine ring, displaying its heart of gold on a platter of silver. She did not at first recognize it as one of those cones come awake, but a moment's notice revealed what it was. Who, then, could have been so cruel to the lovely little creature as to force it open like that, and spread it heart-bare to the terrible death-lamp? Whoever it was, it must be the same that had thrown her out there to be burned to death in its fire!

But she had her hair, and could hang her head, and make a small sweet night of her own about her! She tried to bend the daisy down and away from the sun, and to make its petals hang about it like her hair, but she could not. Alas! it was burned and dead already! She did not know that it could not yield to her gentle force because it was drinking life, with all the eagerness of life, from what she called the death-lamp. Oh, how the lamp burned her!

But she went on thinking--she did not know how; and by-and-by began to reflect that, as there was no roof to the room except that in which the great fire went rolling about, the little Red-tip must have seen the lamp a thousand times, and must know it quite well! and it had not killed it! Nay, thinking about it farther, she began to ask the question whether this, in which she now saw it, might not be its more perfect condition. For now not only did the whole seem perfect, as indeed it did before, but every part showed its own individual perfection as well, which perfection made it capable of combining with the rest into the higher perfection of a whole. The flower was a lamp itself! The golden heart was the light, and the silver border was the alabaster globe skillfully broken and spread wide to let out the glory. Yes; the radiant shape was plainly its perfection! If, then, it was the lamp which had opened it into that shape, the lamp could not be unfriendly to it, but must be of its own kind, seeing it made it perfect! And again, when she thought of it, there was clearly no little resemblance between them.

What if the flower, then, was the little great-grandchild of the lamp, and he was loving it all the time? And what if the lamp did not mean to hurt her, only could not help it? The red tips looked as if the flower had some time or other been hurt: what if the lamp was making the best it could of her--opening her out somehow like the flower? She would bear it patiently, and see. But how coa.r.s.e the color of the gra.s.s was!

Perhaps, however, her eyes not being made for the bright lamp, she did not see them as they were! Then she remembered how different were the eyes of the creature that was not a girl, and was afraid of the darkness! Ah, if the darkness would only come again, all arms, friendly and soft everywhere about her!

She lay so still that Watho thought she had fainted. She was pretty sure she would be dead before the night came to revive her.

XVIII.--REFUGE.

Fixing her telescope on the motionless form, that she might see it at once when the morning came, Watho went down from the tower to Photogen's room. He was much better by this time, and before she left him he had resolved to leave the castle that very night.

The darkness was terrible indeed, but Watho was worse than even the darkness, and he could not escape in the day. As soon, therefore, as the house seemed still, he tightened his belt, hung to it his hunting knife, put a flask of wine and some bread in his pocket, and took his bow and arrows. He got from the house, and made his way at once up to the plain.

But what with his illness, the terrors of the night, and his dread of the wild beasts, when he got to the level he could not walk a step farther, and sat down, thinking it better to die than to live. In spite of his fears, however, sleep contrived to overcome him, and he fell at full length on the soft gra.s.s.

He had not slept long when he woke with such a strange sense of comfort and security that he thought the dawn at least must have arrived. But it was dark night about him. And the sky--no, it was not the sky, but the blue eyes of his naiad looking down upon him! Once more he lay with his head in her lap, and all was well, for plainly the girl feared the darkness as little as he the day.

"Thank you," he said. "You are like live armor to my heart; you keep the fear off me. I have been very ill since then. Did you come up out of the river when you saw me cross?"

"I don't live in the water," she answered. "I live under the pale lamp, and I die under the bright one."

"Ah, yes! I understand now," he returned. "I would not have behaved as I did last time if I had understood; but I thought you were mocking me; and I am so made that I can not help being frightened at the darkness. I beg your pardon for leaving you as I did, for, as I say, I did not understand. Now I believe you were really frightened. Were you not?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "WHAT IS THIS? IT MUST BE DEATH!"]

"I was, indeed," answered Nycteris, "and shall be again. But why you should be, I can not in the least understand. You must know how gentle and sweet the darkness is, how kind and friendly, how soft and velvety!

It holds you to its bosom and loves you. A little while ago I lay faint and dying under your hot lamp. What is it you call it?"

"The sun," murmured Photogen: "how I wish he would make haste!"

"Ah! do not wish that. Do not, for my sake, hurry him. I can take care of you from the darkness, but I have no one to take care of me from the light.--As I was telling you, I lay dying in the sun. All at once I drew a deep breath. A cool wind came and ran over my face. I looked up. The torture was gone, for the death-lamp itself was gone. I hope he does not die and grow brighter yet. My terrible headache was all gone, and my sight was come back. I felt as if I were new made. But I did not get up at once, for I was tired still. The gra.s.s grew cool about me, and turned soft in color. Something wet came upon it, and it was now so pleasant to my feet that I rose and ran about. And when I had been running about a long time, all at once I found you lying, just as I had been lying a little while before. So I sat down beside you to take care of you, till your life--and my death--should come again."

"How good you are, you beautiful creature! Why, you forgave me before ever I asked you!" cried Photogen.