about things, and not a human being but ourselves anywhere in sight
up or down the channel. Except the Pride of Banya, lying out beyond
a lump of rocks towards the line of the sea.

"Not a human being in sight," he repeated, and paused.

"I don't know where they came from, not a bit. And we were feeling
so safe that we were all alone that poor young Sanders was a-singing.
I was in Jimmy Goggles, all except the helmet. 'Easy,' says Always,
'there's her mast.' And after I'd had just one squint over the gunwale,
I caught up the bogey and almost tipped out as old Sanders brought
the boat round. When the windows were screwed and everything was
all right, I shut the valve from the air belt in order to help
my sinking, and jumped overboard, feet foremost--for we hadn't
a ladder. I left the boat pitching, and all of them staring down
into the water after me, as my head sank down into the weeds and
blackness that lay about the mast. I suppose nobody, not the most
cautious chap in the world, would have bothered about a lookout
at such a desolate place. It stunk of solitude.

"Of course you must understand that I was a greenhorn at diving.
None of us were divers. We'd had to muck about with the thing to get
the way of it, and this was the first time I'd been deep. It feels
damnable. Your ears hurt beastly. I don't know if you've ever hurt
yourself yawning or sneezing, but it takes you like that, only ten
times worse. And a pain over the eyebrows here--splitting--and a
feeling like influenza in the head. And it isn't all heaven in your
lungs and things. And going down feels like the beginning of a lift,
only it keeps on. And you can't turn your head to see what's above you,
and you can't get a fair squint at what's happening to your feet