“Oh! don’t; pray don’t go, Fred,” whispered my wife, as she clung to me.
“I must, I must, darling,” I whispered again. “It would be worse than murder to let the poor fellows lie there when a little exertion would save them.”
“Oh! for my sake, don’t, pray;” and then the poor little woman staggered, and would have fallen down the well if I had not caught her in my arms; when we should both have fallen but for the rope round my waist, which fortunately stood the strain, but cut into my ribs fearfully.
There were plenty of hands, though, ready to assist, and the poor fainting girl was borne into the house.
“Now then,” I cried, “lower gently; and the moment I stop crying out ‘Right’ haul up again, for there will be something wrong.”
The windlass creaked and groaned, and then all at once the people round the well seemed to give a jump upwards, and then were gone, while the green, slimy sides of the pit were running up past me as I seemed to stand still in the well-sinker’s broad oak bucket. For a moment I clung to the rope with my eyes shut, when all at once there was a bump, and I opened them to see that I was ascending.
“Right, right,” I shouted, when there was another jerk, and I began to descend again, at intervals crying out the word of safety—‘Right’; and so I went down and down, with my flesh creeping, and a strange sensation, as though I was falling rapidly through space.
I have no doubt there are plenty of men who would be heroes at proper time and place; but there is no heroic stuff in my composition, for I here boldly assert that I never felt so horribly frightened before in my life, as I went gliding down lower and lower past the green slimy chalk, with the bucket swinging terribly from side to side; for the well was of very large diameter. I kept on giving the signal, and have no idea how it sounded above, but it seemed to me as though it left my lips in the shape of a gasping sob.
Still down, down, with the horrid feeling of falling, and a holding of the breath. The depth seemed awful; and now, though doubly secured, I trembled for the safety of the ropes, and turned giddy and closed my eyes.
“Is it all right?” shouted a voice from above, and my descent stopped.