without bending down something painful. And being deep it was dark,
let alone the blackness of the ashes and mud that formed the bottom.
It was like going down out of the dawn back into the night, so to speak.

"The mast came up like a ghost out of the black, and then a lot of
fishes, and then a lot of flapping red seaweed, and then whack I came
with a kind of dull bang on the deck of the Ocean Pioneer, and the
fishes that had been feeding on the dead rose about me like a swarm of
flies from road stuff in summer time. I turned on the compressed air
again--for the suit was a bit thick and mackintoshery after all, in
spite of the rum--and stood recovering myself. It struck coolish down
there, and that helped take off the stuffiness a bit.

"When I began to feel easier, I started looking about me. It was
an extraordinary sight. Even the light was extraordinary, a kind
of reddy-coloured twilight, on account of the streamers of seaweed
that floated up on either side of the ship. And far overhead just
a moony, deep green-blue. The deck of the ship, except for a slight
list to starboard, was level, and lay all dark and long between
the weeds, clear except where the masts had snapped when she rolled,
and vanishing into black night towards the forecastle. There wasn't
any dead on the decks, most were in the weeds alongside, I suppose;
but afterwards I found two skeletons lying in the passengers' cabins,
where death had come to them. It was curious to stand on that deck
and recognise it all, bit by bit; a place against the rail where I'd
been fond of smoking by starlight, and the corner where an old chap
from Sydney used to flirt with a widow we had aboard. A comfortable
couple they'd been, only a month ago, and now you couldn't have
got a meal for a baby crab off either of them.