SENSATIONS OF A DROWNING MAN.

Colonist, Volume II, Issue 124, 28 December 1858, Page 4

SENSATIONS OF A DROWNING MAN.

It is not often that men who have crossed the threshold of death come back to relate how they felt when in the grasp of the mighty tyrant. However, a correspondent of "the Northern Times (N.S.W) furnishes to that journal the subjoined very graphic account of the sensations he experienced when drowning; and as it is stated to have been written immediately after the almost tragical event, perhaps some reliance may be placed upon the truthfulness of the sensations and feelings described:—- ---" Oh, Lord ! methought it was such pain to drown!" so says Shakspeare's Clarence in recounting his horrid dream to the Keeper of the Tower. From the tenor of his language following this pithy and strikinsfline, I am led to suppose that the pain was mental rather than bodily, and peculiarly heightened from the remorseful associations which rushed upon him at tbe moment of dissolution. It is an axiom that mental pain is more difficult to bear than bodily, and so I have no doubt that Shakspeave, knowing this, and also the power of conscience at the hour of death, paints, in Clarence's case, the agonies of drowning with a more vivid colouring than otherwise he would have done. Very few people undergo the pangs of drowning, and afterwards live and write an account of their feelings and thoughts at the very time of struggling with tlieir fate, and this may be accounted for by the fact that very few are resuscitated after meeting with a watery grave. Even in the case of those who do recover, their senses of observation at ' the time are generally too much weakened to enable them to mark the conditions of their being, when in such mortal peril by the waters. "Some people entertain an idea that death by drowning is less*painful than by any other suffocating process : my own observation enables me to agree with them, and in order that the reader may have some knowledge of what drowning really is, I will relate an event that happened to myself, and which very nearly proved fatal. In the year 1844 I was on board a vessel, off St. James Town, St. Helena; the weather was very sulrry and oppressive, and after the labor of the day was over some of the crew jumped overboard, partly to clean themselves, and partly for the pleasure of swimming. I was then unable to swim, and was standing on the spars, looking over the rail at those who were luxuriating in the cool water—their motions appeared to me so easy and so natural, there was such a graceful abandonment in cleaving through the waters, that I thought swimming must come rather by intuition, than by lessons and practice. I fancied I could imitate their motions, and mentally believed myself capable of the easiest buoyancy, although I boasted no flesh, save what covered my anatomical structure. With these ideas I divested myself of my clothing, took an oar for greater security, and boldly jumped overboard—by some means I lost my oar, and "on coming to the surface of the water, found myself without any prop, and my theory of natural swimming perfectly untenable. I floundered about like a spritsail-yarded shark, got my mouth full of water, weakened myself by vain straggles, and then sank down some fathoms. On coming to the top of the sea I was greeted with approving cheers and laughter ftom those on board, who fancied I was personating a drowning man for their amusement. I afterwards learned that the gallant manner in which I jumped overboard, impressed every one who saw me do it with the belief that I was a first-rate swimmer, and consequently my first disappearance under the water gave them no uneasiness. The ill-timed mirth of my shipmates affected my lugubrious face with another twinge of horror, and they saw but too truly that I was positively drowning, either from a desire to please them, or an inability to keep myself afloat. Again I sank from sight, and after a time re-appeared ghastlier than before—my long dripping locks hanging down my pallid face, my distended eyes and rigid and contracted expression, constituting any picture but. that of a Neptune or a Triton. Again 1 yielded to fate or the law of gravitation, and for the third and last time passed from their eyes, and was slowly sinking to my quiet bed beneath, when I felt myself seized by the hair of my head, and dragged to the surface of the water. My first act was to throw my arms around my deliverer's neck with a dangerous rapture of thankfulness; he told me to desist, or both of us would be drowned; I obeyed him, and he swam with me to the ship, and I was saved again to see the sun and enjoy fresh life. Honest IJavid Stratton! Thou hast a gallant soul, and art indeed a hero of the sea! thy manly independent spirit is thy best possession, and if worth, bravery, honesty, and a kindly nature are worthy of esteem, then thou art worthy of the admiration and friendship of all who love goodness and are good. At the time of his saving me from death, I thought but little of the deed —sailors live and breathe in such an atmosphere of danger that an escape from death by the very narrowest chance serves only for a few minutes talk and 'tis then forgotten. I ought to have rewarded him for his gallantry, but the thought never entered my head, and I am sure it never crossed his brain, as, according to the sailor fashion, he had only done a shipmate's duty. " During my immersion I appeared to have lived an age—my mind was busy, in retrospection—scenes almost forgotten came before me as fresh as ever, and I seemed to live again the life of boyhood and of youth: in my second, and third descent into the yielding waters my thoughts arrayed themselves thus. The Heaven of religion opened before me—death had no terrors with reference to futurity—l was at perfect peace with all, and my conscience

gave me no upbraiding check to disturb the serenity of my spirit's exit—l felt assured of entering the blessed regions where joy is ever present, and where the spirit luxuriates in the fullest perception of the mysteries of this world so wondrous fair. And then came thoughts of home and my poor lonely mother! I knew that she would feel my loss, and weep for me as dying far away, unblessed, unsoothed by kindly hands and eyes; at the same moment, also, and by a most peculiar mental retroversion, the following lines, which breathe so much of beauty, quaint and tender, and were great favorites of mine, seemed to pass before me :— < Little did my mother think, The day she suckled me, What lands I should travel in, Or what death I should die; *- She little thought that I should be '"" A wanderer on the lonely sea, And find at length a peaceful grave, Ten fathoms deep beneath the wave.' These faded sorrowfully and yet soothingly, and then the greatest pang shot across my brain—my first and only love, my Margaret ! (I was then possessed by the blest spirit of first and passionate love), how would she weep me dead—how would she sit forlorn and sad, and sigh to think her joys were ended—how would she embalm and cherish my memory and our love, and count all life dull care and vacancy, for I was far away, and slept beneath the sounding billows—the thoughts of her were my bitterest pangs, and yet I was resigned to all, and ceased to struggle or to think of life. "With all these memories and conflicting thoughts were mixed the bodily ' sensations—there was a heavy fullness in my throat, down which a tide seemed roaring, a.. fretful and eager working of the hands to grasp some stay, and which, at the very moment, suggested to me the line of' drowning men catching at straws;' an utter immovability of the lower limbs, a peculiar ponderousness about the feet, as though tons upon tons of lead were tied to them, and held me down. I had no power to move my limbs, they seemed only to accelerate my downward progress; • there was an utter prostration of all strength, and a yielding and succumbing to the spirit of the waters, from a mental perception ofthe inutility of striving to struggle. "With all these there was the fullest knowledge of my state, a recognition of approaching death; no acute pains disturbed me, the only painful feelings (and they were dull) were the sensations about the throat and feet, all else relative to the body was quiet and calm. "The water did not appear to be of any particular color, but I remember well I felt how powerless I was with the yielding and yet cleaving mass about me. I appeared as nothing to the immensity which surrounded me, and this feeling partly prepared me to die so resignedly; my body was perfectly erect, the arms and hands were extended, convulsively clutching the waters and finding no resting-place; the descent was slow and measured, and as 1 floated down, the hair of my head arose straight up, as though the spirit there would fain cling to life yet longer. " On being pulled to the surface of the water, a deep heavy o'er powering sigh | escaped me, as though nature, by one vast effort, strove at one and the same time to overcome the suffocating influence, and to drink in deep the breath of life; that sigh was a grateful relief to my whole being, and served to restore my equilibrium. " Such, then, were the mental and bodily sensations I felt when crossing o'er the threshold of death, and the memory of which will live with me as fresh as ever, until I really enter into that country «from whose bourn no traveller returns."