I remembered the safe. It lay jammed across the hole, and, while I was too feeble to take great interest, I recall watching it with a sort of fascination. I felt its sides, its edges. Then the combination attracted me, shining as it did in the dim light, like a bit of white in the surrounding blackness. I lazily turned the knob, whirled it about. And all the time they were pumping air to me under the pressure of fifty feet of water.
I felt at the aperture above where the edge of the safe shut off the opening. There was nearly a foot of clear room, but this was not enough for my figure, incased as it was in the suit. It was ample for the life line and hose to pass through without any interruption at all, and all I had to do was to live long enough for them to get that safe away. Surely some one would come down, and try to sling it again properly.
I lay with my front glass to the opening, and held the lamp so that the rays would shine outside. There I watched and tried to control the thoughts that kept coming with a surging feeling of dread that made my heart thump all the harder. Drowsiness would come, and the whirling in my brain would get me back again to the land and beautiful dreams. Then the jerking and hauling, and trying to dislodge me would arouse me again, and I would come back to the present.
I remember watching through the opening, and seeing forms passing. These must have been fish, or denizens of the sea. They flitted through the range of the lamp like sudden ghosts, the light striking their bodies, and then disappearing into the blackness without.
The lamp suddenly went out.
I was seized with the wildest terror at the inky blackness about me. The full horror of it all now came with greater force. That tiny spark had kept me up wonderfully. It had seemed like a ray of hope. I put out my hands with muscles shaking and trembling, feeling that inexorable edge of iron that shut me off from life.
Would Rokeby try it? Would he try to save me?
That was the final thought. I tried to put myself in his place. I would do much for a man dying by inches—dying where he might be saved if one would take a little risk. He might get below in time yet. He might get a whip upon that safe, and, with the powerful wrecking tug working her winches, upset the huge square of steel, and drag it out of the way.
But if he was coming down, he should have come hours ago. As a matter of fact, I had already been down half an hour, and I could stand it for at least twice that long yet. But it seemed to me that I had been abandoned, that they were too cowardly to try to save me. My whirling brain and roaring ears told me a story of days of suffering, of interminable torture.
Would Rokeby try it?