The Man In The Reservoir | Page 4

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 the water by me. I saw on the instant that a fish had entangled
itself in the wire noose. The rod quivered, plunged, came again to the
surface, and rippled the water as it shot in arrowy flight from side to
side of the tank. At last, driven toward the southeast corner of the
Reservoir, the small end seemed to have got foul somewhere. The
brazen butt, which, every time the fish sounded, was thrown up to the
moon, now sank by its own weight, showing that the other end must be
fast. But the cornered fish, evidently 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 that pike with my hands. I did not take him from the
slip-noose, however; but, standing upon the ledge, 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 'Spirit of the Times' office; and when I
discovered that the fish at the end of the wire 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 have placed another one
in the corresponding corner of the other compartment of the tank ever
since my remarkable night's adventure in the Reservoir."

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