Explore "Lister's Great Adventure" by Harold Bindloss on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
_Arcturus'_ holds were empty and a long row of oil puncheons occupied the beach, but the men who had dragged the goods from the water were exhausted by heavy toil in the scorching sun, and some were sick. The divers had bolted on plates to cover the holes in the vessel's bilge before one fell ill and his mate's nerve went. The heat and poisonous vapors from the swamps had broken his health, and he got a bad jar one day his air-pipe entangled and the pump-gang dragged him, unconscious, to the top.
Afterwards, for the most part, Lister undertook the diving, but for long his efforts to reach the floor of the engine-room were baffled. To crawl across slanted gratings and down weedy ladders, while air-pipe and signal-line trailed about the machinery, was horribly dangerous, but he kept it up, although he got slacker and felt his pluck was breaking. Then one afternoon he knew he could not go down again, and he stayed under water long.