THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR

By Charles Fenno Hoffman


You 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 the sunshine-now watching the pickerel that glide along the
lucid edges of the black pool within, and now looking off upon the scene
of rich and wondrous variety that spreads along the two rivers on either
side.

"They may talk of Alpheus and Arethusa," murmured an idling sophomore,
who had found his way thither during recitation 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 all hollow. By George,
too, the bay yonder looks as blue as ever the Ægean Sea to Byron's eye,
gazing from the Acropolis! 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
colors. 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 yet 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 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. I am boring you, though?"

"Not at all. But you seem so familiar with the spot, I wish you could
tell me why that ladder leading down to the water is lashed against the
stonework 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 you smiled just now. Shall I tell
you all about them?"

"Pray do."

"Well, you have seen the notice forbidding any one to fish in the
Reservoir. Now, when I read that warning, the spirit of the thing struck
me at once as inferring nothing more than that one should not sully
the temperance potations of 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 delicate wire. I was determined to have a touch at the fellows
with this kind of tackle.

"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.

"I prowled along the parapet for a considerable time, but not a single
fish could I see. The clouds made a flickering light and shade, that
wholly foiled my steadfast gaze. I was convinced that should they come
up thicker, my whole night's venture 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 the solid masonry. In
one of the fissures from whence these spring, I planted a foot and 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 one foot for a place to plant it below
me.

"In that moment the flap of a pound pike made me look round, and the
roots of the 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 stone caldron,
where I must swim for my life Heaven only could tell how long!

"I am a capital swimmer; and this naturally gave me a degree of
self-possession. Falling as I had, I of 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 with 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 felt with my hands
and with my feet. Surely, I thought, there must be some fissure like
those in which that ill-omened weed had found a place for its root!

"There was none. My fingers became sore in busying themselves with the
harsh and inhospitable stones. My feet slipped from the smooth and
slimy masonry beneath the water; and several times my face 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 rat drowned in a half-filled hogshead-how he
swims round, and round, and round; and after vainly trying the sides
again and again with his paws, fixes his eyes upon the 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, when a cruel urchin of eight or ten.
Boys are horribly cruel, sir; boys, women, and savages. All childlike
things 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 savage is as tender to his own young as a boy
is to a favorite puppy-the 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 I flung 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 the centre of a stone tank, 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 noted the planet with any
emotion she was on the wane. Mary was with me; I had brought her out
here one morning to look at the view from the top of the Reservoir. She
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 I 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
rebuke my joyous mood, as if we had no 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'? '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 the 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 we have talked, too, of that Carian shepherd who spent
his damp nights upon the hills, gazing as I do on the lustrous planet!
Who will revel with her amid those old superstitions? Who, from our own
unlegended woods, will evoke their yet undetected, haunting spirits? Who
peer with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws, and challenge
the whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter? Who laugh
merrily over the stupid guesswork of pedants, that never mingled with
the infinitude of nature, through love exhaustless and all-embracing, as
we have? Poor girl! she will be companionless.

"Alas! companionless forever-save in the exciting stages of some brisk
flirtation. She will live hereafter by feeding other hearts with love's
lore she has learned from me, and then, Pygmalion-like, grow fond of the
images she has herself endowed with semblance of divinity, until they
seem to breathe back the mystery the soul can 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 thing for 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 great levity; but indeed, indeed I should grow delirious did I
venture to hold steadily to the awfulness of my feelings 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 that corner (said I), and swim around the whole
inclosure. I will swim slowly and again feel the sides 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 sustaining
myself 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 beyond in the moonlight. 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 back to rest just where
those wavy lines would meet. The stars looked viciously 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.
The stars were forgotten; the moon, the very world of which I as yet
formed a part, my poor Mary herself, were 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 physical obstacles which men like myself had
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 self-trust; and I laughed aloud as I dashed the sluggish
water from side to side.

"Then came an emotion of pity for myself of wild regret; of sorrow, Oh,
infinite for a fate so 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 the deplorable fate of the
other.

"And then I 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
past, 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
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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