“I think not,” rejoined his friend; “the water would have supported them too, though you’d have found them very heavy when you came out of it. Will you try the experiment?”
“The theory is sufficient for me,” concluded the sprightly Welshman. However, another of the crew put this question:—
“Since the body can be supported on the surface of the water, as O’Mackerry has said, and with little exertion, or without any, as in swimming on the back, how is it that a drowned body sinks, and often rises some days afterwards?”
“Because,” said our philosopher,—who had been crammed on the subject,—“the lungs of a drowning person become filled with water, and therefore the body, becoming specifically heavier, sinks. The body remains at the bottom only until the water has been quite freed from it by compression; it then is swelled and expanded by gases generated within, and becoming lighter than the water, rises to the top.”
They had for some time been leaning on their oars, enjoying this chat, and were about to retrace their course, when one of the English lads asked O’Mackerry if he had ever been in real danger in a boat. The other reflected a little, and then thought of an incident which had occurred to him some years ago, before he had learned to swim. “Yes,” said he, “but for God’s good providence I would have been,” (“You mean should, I suppose,” said Coxswain Green, in an under tone) “assuredly drowned. I had been contriving how to put out striker lines in a deep loch near my father’s house, and, not having a boat, I substituted a stable door, taken from its hinges, as a raft for my purpose. I had read of rafts on the Rhine with whole families on them—with a cabin and cow-house and pig-sty; and why should not my miniature raft support my weight? I floated the door—balanced myself nicely upon it—put out for the middle of the loch, gently paddling it with a pole, and fearful of the slightest change of my position, which would have destroyed the horizontal equilibrium of my feeble raft. When I had gone far enough—into water thirty or forty feet deep—I sent off the strikers, but unfortunately flung away my paddle along with them. My insensibly nervous movements caused the door to incline into the water at one side an inch or two. I moved a hair’s breadth; it then declined to the other side. It would sink. I had no doubt of this. Then I gently stooped to try if I could unfasten a shoe; but this was impracticable. I tried a balancing movement again, and the door righted, but not entirely. My presence of mind, however, did not fail me. I took off my hat, and paddled myself with this from side to side alternately, until I reached the strand—through thick masses of aquatic plants—the water-lily in particular, whose long and interlacing stems would have embraced me to death, if I had fallen among them. I have never known any one to swim or bathe in that dangerously deep loch. I do not see how I could have escaped drowning at that time if I had slipped from the raft.”
This led the adventurous youth to narrate another difficulty from which he had been mercifully extricated by God’s providence. He had been snipe-shooting in an Irish hog, and thoughtlessly trod upon a green, firm, and sound-looking, but very treacherous quagmire, us he was watching a snipe which had just sprung up. He was suddenly immersed in the semi-fluid peat to his shoulders, and only saved from quickly subsiding into the depths of the morass by a solid bed of clay, at the depth of five feet and a half. He sank to his under lip, barely escaping suffocation, and having his breath spared for shouting. He was pulled up by various contrivances, a reeking column of black mire. As it seemed clear that Mr O’Mackerry must have been engulfed in the bog if he had been half an inch under six feet two in stature, it was illogically argued that it would be a general advantage to manhood if all were exceedingly tall—suppose of the height of the suite of the Duke of Brunswick (composed of men some inches above seven feet), which came to London a hundred years ago.
“Of course,” said Tydvill, “Churchill is right in the Rosciad when he says:
”‘Your hero should be always tall, you know.’”
But the wiser ones of the crew showed that the ordinary height, as fixed by the Almighty, is the best. If the scale of men were raised a foot or so, with proportioned frame and weight, horses and other beasts of burden should be increased also; else the giants could neither hunt nor even travel, nor find beef and mutton, etc, for their support. And if the animals were larger, more grass, etc, would be required than at present. The whole scale of proportions would require alteration. Who can dare to think that God’s design is not the best? Neither giants nor dwarfs form the general rule, and extreme exceptions are happily very rare.
“What became of the gun?” inquired one of the party. “I hope that was not swallowed up?”