In the Reservoir.

Auckland Star, Volume VI, Issue 1625, 1 May 1875, Page 6 (Supplement)

In the Reservoir.

YotT may see some of the best society in New York on the top of the distributing reservoir, any of these fine October mornings. There were two or three carriages in waiting, and half a dozen senatorial looking mothers with young children, pacing the parapet, as we basked there the Other day in sun-hine —now watching the pickeral that glide along the lucid edges of the black pool within, and now looking off upon the scene of rich and wondroun variety that spreads along the two rivers on either side.

* They may talk of Alpheus and Aarethnsa,' murmured an idling sophomore, who had found his way thither during reci:tion hours,' but the Croton in passing over an arm of the sea at Spuyten-Duyvil, and bursting to sight again in this truncated pyramid, beats it hollow. By George, too, the bay yonder looks as blue as ever the ./Egean sea to Byron's eyes, gazing from the A cropolis! But the painted foliage on these crags —The Greeks must have dreamed of such a vegetable phenomenon in the midst of their grayish olive groves, or they never would have supplied the want of it in.their landscape by embroidering their marble temples with gay colours. Did you see that pike break, sir ?'

'I did not.'

'Zounds ! his silver fin flashed upon the black Acheron, like a restless soul that hoped to mount from the pool.' -■' The place seems suggestive of fancies to you! we observed in reply to the rattlepate. ' It is, indeed, for I have done up a good deal of anxious thinking within a circle of a few yards from where that fish broke just now.' *A singular place for meditation —the middle of the reservoir!'

' You look incredulous, sir; but it's a fact. A fellow can never tell, until he is tried, in what situation his most earnest meditations may be concentrated. lam boring you, though ?' 'Not at all. But you seem to be so familiar with the spot, I wish you could tell me why that ladder leading down to the water is lashed against the stone-work in yonder corner ?' 'That ladder,' said the young man. brightening at the question; ' why, the position, perhaps the very existence, of that ladder resulted from my meditations in the reservoir, at which yon smiled just now. Shall I tell you all about them ?' I 'Pray do.'

'Well, you have seen the notice for- j bidding any one to fish in the reservoir, j Now when I read that warning, the fpwjtjpf the thing struck me at once as inferring nothing more than that one should not sully the temperance potations Ot our citizens by steeping bait in it of any Kind; but you probably know the common way of taking -pike with a slip-noose of 2SB?*F*L IT 8 det«mined to have •touch at the fellows with this kind of

' I chose a moonlight night; and an hour before the edifice was closed to visitors I secreted myself within the walls, determined to pass the night on the top. All went as I could wish it. The night proved cloudy, but it was only a variable drift of broken clouds which obscured the moon. I had a walking-cane rod with me which would reach to the margin of the water, and several feet beyond, if necessary. To this was attached the wire about fifteen inches in length.'

j ' I prowled along the parapet for a considerable time, but not a single fish could I I see. Ihe clouds made a flickering light and shade, that wholly foiled my steadfast gaze. I was convinced that should they come up thicker, my whole nights adventure would be thrown away, ' Why should I not descend the sloping wall and get nearer on a level with the fish, for thus alone can I hope to see one ?' The question had hardly shaped itself in my mind before I had one leg over the iron railing. ' If you look around you will see now that there are some half-dozen weeds growing here and there, amid the fissures of solid masonry. In one of the fissures from whence these spring I planted a foot ancl began my descent. The reservoir was fuller than it is now, and a few strides would have carried me to the margin of the water Holding on to the cleft above, I felt round with the one foot to plant it below me.

'At that moment the flap of a pound pikfi made me look round, and the roots of tho weed upon which I partially depended, gave way as I was in the act of turning. Sir. one's senses are sharpened in deadly peril; as I live now, I, distinctly heard the bells of Trinity chiming midnight, as I rose to the surface the next instant, immersed in the cold cauldron, where I must swim for my life Heaven only knows how long !

* I am a capital swimmer; and this naturally gave me a degree of self-posses-sion. Falling as I had, lof course had pitched out some distance from the sloping parapet. A few strokes brought me to the edge. I really was not yet certain but that I could clamber up the face of the wall anywhere. I hoped that I could. I felt certain at least there was some spot where I might get hold witli my hands, even if I did not ultimately ascend it.

'I tried the nearest spot. The inclination of the wall was so vertical that it did not even rest me to lean against it. I fit with my hands and with my feet. Surely, I thought, there must be some fissure like that in which that ill-omened weed had found a place for its root!

1 There was none. My fingers became sore in busying themselves with the harsh and inhospitable stones My feet slipped from the s<uooth and slimy masonry beneath the water; and several times my feet came in rude contact with the wall when my foothold gave way on the instant that I seemed to have found some diminutive rocky cleat upon which I could stay myself. ' Sir. did you ever see a rht drowned in a half-filled hogshead—how he swims round and round, and after vainly trying the sides again and again with his p-iws, fixes his eyes upon tbe upper rim as if he would look himself out of his watery prison ? ' I thought of the miserable vermin, thought of him as I had often watched thus his dying agonies, wheo a cruel urchin of eight or ten. Boys are horribly cruel, sir ; boys, women, and savages. All childlike thinks are cruel—cruel from a want of thought and from perverse ingenuity although by instinct each of these is so tender. You may not have observed it, but a sayage is as tender to its youug as a boy is to a favorite puppy, tbe same boy that will torture a kitten out of existence. I thought then, I say. of the rat drowning in a half-filled cask of water and lifting his gaze out of the vessel as he grew more and more desperate, and 1 thing myself on my back, and floating thus fixed my eyes upon the face of the moon.

' The moon is well enough in her way however you may look at her; but her appearance is, to say the least of it, peculiar to a man floating on his back in tho centre nf a stone (ank with a dead wall of some fifteen or twenty feet rising squarely on every side of him !' )The young man smiled bitterly as he said this, and shuddered once or twice before he went on musingly ) 'The last time I had not'd the planet With any emotion she wa« on the wane, Mary was with me ; I had brought her out here one morning to look as the view from the top of the reservoir, ■"he said little of the scene, but as we talked of our old childish loves, I saw that its fresh features were incorporating themselves with tender memories of the past and T was content.

' There was a rich golden haze upon the landscape and as my own spirits rose amid the voluptuous atmosphere, she pointed to the waning planet, discernible like a faint gash in the welkin and wondered how long it would be before the leaves would fall, Strange girl! did she mean to rubuke my joyous mood, as if we had do right to be happy while nature withering in her pomp, and the sickly moon wasting in the blaze of noontide were there to remind us of' the gone forever P' 'They will all renew themselves dear Mary,' said I, encouragingly, ' and there is one that will ever keep tryst alike with thee and nature through all seasons, if thou wilt but be true to one of us, and remain as now a child of nature.

'A tear sprang to her eye, and then searching her pocket for her card-case, she remembered an engagement to be present at Miss Lawson's opening of Fall bonnets at two o'clock,

' And yet dear, wild, wayward Mary; I thought of her now. You have probably outlived this sort of thing, sir ; but I looking at the moon, as I floated there upturned to her yellow light, thought of tho loved being; whose tears I knew would flow when she heard of my singular fate at once so grotesque, yet melancholy to awfulness.

'And how often have we talked, too of tbat Carian shepherd who spent his damp nights upon the hills gazing as I do upon the lustrous planet! Who will revel with her amid those old superstitions ? Who from her own unleaended woods will evoketheiryet undetected haunting spirits? Who re"r with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws and challenge the whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter P Who laugh merrily over the stupid guess-work of pedants that never . mingled with the infinitude of nature I through love exhaustless and all-embrac-

i! ing as we have ? Poor girl! she will be i companionless. 4 Alas ! companionless forever—save m . : the exciting stages of some brisk flirtation. ;' She will live hereafter by feeding other ! hearts with love's lore she had learned i from me, and, Pygmalion-like grow fond , of the images she had herself crowned with semblance of divinity, until they seem to breathe back the mystery the soul c*n truly catch from only one. ' How anxious she will be lest the coroner shall have discovered any of her notes in my pocket! . 'I felt chilly as this last reflection crossed my mind, partly at thought of the coroner partly, at the idea of Mary being unwillingly compelled to wear mourning for me in case of such a disclosure of our engagement. It is a provoking thingfor a girl of nineteen to have to go into mourning for a deceased lover, at the beginning of her second Winter in the metropolis. ' The water, though, with my motionless position, must have had something to do with my chilliness. I see, sir you think that I tell my story with levity: but indeed, indeed I should grow delirous did I venture to hold steadily to tho awfulness of my feeling the greater part of that night. I think, indeed, I must have been most of the time hysterical with horror, for the vibrating emotions I have recapitulated did pass through my brain even as I have detailed them.- ---■ But as I now became calm in thought, I summoned up again some resolution of action. ( ' ' I will begin at the corner,' said I, 'and swim around the whole enclosure. I'll swim slowly and again feel the edges of the tank with my feet. If die I must, let me perish at least from well directed though exhausting effort, not sink from mere bootless weariness in sustainingmyself till the morning shall bring relief.' ' The sides of the place seemed to grow higher as I now kept my watery course beneath them. It was not altogether a dead pull. I. had some variety of emotion in making my circuit. When I swam in the shadow it looked to me more cheerful in the moonlight, and when I swam in the moonlight I had the hope of making some discovery when I should again reach the shadow. I turned several times on my oack to rest just where those wavy hues would meet. The stars looked victoriously bright to me from the bottom of that well ; there was such a company of them ; they were so glad in their lustrous revelry, and they had such space to move in I was alone, sad to despair, in a strange element, prisoned and a solitary gazer upon their mocking chorus. And yet there was nothing else with which I could hold communion !

' I turned upon my breast and struck out almost frantically once more. Tbe stars were forgotten ; the moon, the very world of which I as yet formed a part, my poor Mary herself, was forgotten. I thought only of the strong man there perishing ; of me in my lusty manhood, in the sharp vigor of my dawning prime, with faculties illimitable, with senses all alert, battling there with phj'sical obstacles which men like rnyselfliad brought together for my undoing. The Eternal could never have willed this thing ! I could not and I would not perish thus. And I grew strong in insolence of selftrust ; and I laughed aloud as I dashed the sluggish water from side to side. ' Then came an emotion of pity for myself —of wild, wild regret; of sorrow, O, infinite for a fate jo desolate, a doom so dreary, so heart-sickening! You may laugh at the contradiction if you will, sir ; but I felt that I could sacrifice my own life on the instant, to redeem another fellow-creature from such a place of horror, from an end so piteous. My soul and my vital spirit seemed in that desperate moment to be separating, while one in parting grieved over ths deplorable fate of the other.

' And then T prayed ! I prayed, why or wherefore I know not. It was not from fear, It could not have been in hope. The days of miracles are passed, and there was no natural law by whose providential interposition I, could be saved. I did not pray; it prayed of itself, my soul within me.

' Was the calmness that I now felt torpidity ? the torpidity that precedes dissolution, to the strong swimmer who, sinking from exhaustion, must at last add a bubble to the wave as he suffocates beneath the element which now denied his mastery ? If it were so, how fortunate was it that my floating rod at that moment attracted my attention as it dashed through tbe water by me, I saw on the instant that a fish had entangled himself in the wire noose. The rod quivered, plunged, came again to the surface, and rippled tie water as it shot in arrowy flight from side to side of the tank. At last, driven toward the south-east corner of the reservoir, the small end seemed to have got stuck somewhere. The brazen butt, which every time the flash sounded wag thrown up to the moon, now sank by its own weight, showing that tbe other end must be fast. But the cornered fish, evident y anchored somewhere by that short wire, floundered several times to the surface before I thought of striking out to the spot.

' The water is low now, and tolerably clear. You may see the very ledge there, sir, in yonder corner, on which the small end of my rod rested when I secured tfyat pike with my hands. I did not take him Prom the slip-noose, however; but, standing upon the edge, handled the rod in a workmanlike manner, as I flung that pound pickerel over the iron railing upon the top of the parapet. The rod, as I have told you, barely reached from the railing to the water. It was a heavy, strong bass rod which I had borrowed in the ' S jirit of the Times' office ; and when I discovered that the fish at the end made a strong enough knot to prevent me from drawing my tackle away from the railing around which it twined itself as I threw, why, as you can at once see, I had but little difficulty in making my way up the face of the wall with such assistance. The ladder which attracted your notice is, as you see, lashed to .the iron railing in the identical spot where I thus made my escape; and, for fear of similar accidents, they havel placed another one in the corresponding corner of the compartment of the tank ever since my remarkable night's adventure in the reservoir.'

Hb Had Business.—A Macomb street woman stood at the gate the other evening as a boy cam© up and she angrily exclaimed :