I had a water glass like we use sponging and my hand shook so I could hardly hold it. All the port holes were shut that you could see going along over her but way down below near the bottom something must have been open because there were pieces of things floating out all the time. You couldn’t tell what they were. Just pieces. That’s what the birds were after. You never saw so many birds. They were all around me; crazy yelling.
I could see everything sharp and clear. I could see her rounded over and she looked a mile long under the water. She was lying on a clear white bank of sand and the spar was a sort of foremast or some sort of tackle that slanted out of water the way she was laying on her side. Her bow wasn’t very far under. I could stand on the letters of her name on her bow and my head was just out of water. But the nearest port hole was twelve feet down. I could just reach it with the grains pole and I tried to break it with that but I couldn’t. The glass was too stout. So I sculled back to the boat and got a wrench and lashed it to the end of the grains pole and I couldn’t break it. There I was looking down through the glass at that liner with everything in her and I was the first one to her and I couldn’t get into her. She must have had five million dollars worth in her.
It made me shaky to think how much she must have in her. Inside the port hole that was closest I could see something but I couldn’t make it out through the water glass. I couldn’t do any good with the grains pole and I took off my clothes and stood and took a couple of deep breaths and dove over off the stern with the wrench in my hand and swam down. I could hold on for a second to the edge of the port hole and I could see in and there was a woman inside with her hair floating all out. I could see her floating plain and I hit the glass twice with the wrench hard and I heard the noise clink in my ears but it wouldn’t break and I had to come up.
I hung onto the dinghy and got my breath and then I climbed in and took a couple of breaths and dove again. I
