THE MAN IN THE RESERVOIR

By Charles Fenno Hoffman

You may see some of the best society in New York on the top of theDistributing Reservoir, any of these fine October mornings. There weretwo or three carriages in waiting, and half a dozen senatorial-lookingmothers with young children, pacing the parapet, as we basked there theother day in the sunshine-now watching the pickerel that glide along thelucid edges of the black pool within, and now looking off upon the sceneof rich and wondrous variety that spreads along the two rivers on eitherside. 

"They may talk of Alpheus and Arethusa, " murmured an idling sophomore, who had found his way thither during recitation hours, "but the Crotonin passing over an arm of the sea at Spuyten Duyvil, and bursting tosight again in this truncated pyramid, beats it all hollow. By George, too, the bay yonder looks as blue as ever the Ęgean Sea to Byron's eye, gazing from the Acropolis! But the painted foliage on these crags!-theGreeks must have dreamed of such a vegetable phenomenon in the midst oftheir grayish olive groves, or they never would have supplied the wantof it in their landscape by embroidering their marble temples with gaycolors. Did you see that pike break, sir?"

"I did not. "

"Zounds! his silver fin flashed upon the black Acheron, like a restlesssoul that hoped yet to mount from the pool. "

"The place seems suggestive of fancies to you?" we observed in reply tothe rattlepate. 

"It is, indeed, for I have done up a good deal of anxious thinkingwithin 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 beconcentrated. I am boring you, though?"

"Not at all. But you seem so familiar with the spot, I wish you couldtell me why that ladder leading down to the water is lashed against thestonework in yonder corner. "

"That ladder, " said the young man, brightening at the question-"why, theposition, perhaps the very existence, of that ladder resulted from mymeditations in the Reservoir, at which you smiled just now. Shall I tellyou all about them?"

"Pray do. "

"Well, you have seen the notice forbidding any one to fish in theReservoir. Now, when I read that warning, the spirit of the thing struckme at once as inferring nothing more than that one should not sullythe temperance potations of our citizens by steeping bait in it, of anykind; but you probably know the common way of taking pike with a slipnoose of delicate wire. I was determined to have a touch at the fellowswith this kind of tackle. 

"I chose a moonlight night; and an hour before the edifice was closedto visitors, I secreted myself within the walls, determined to pass thenight 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 themoon. I had a walking cane-rod with me which would reach to the marginof the water, and several feet beyond if necessary. To this was attachedthe wire, about fifteen inches in length. 

"I prowled along the parapet for a considerable time, but not a singlefish could I see. The clouds made a flickering light and shade, thatwholly foiled my steadfast gaze. I was convinced that should they comeup thicker, my whole night's venture would be thrown away. 'Why shouldI 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 shapeditself 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-dozenweeds growing here and there, amid the fissures of the solid masonry. Inone of the fissures from whence these spring, I planted a foot and beganmy descent. The Reservoir was fuller than it is now, and a few strideswould have carried me to the margin of the water. Holding on to thecleft above, I felt round with one foot for a place to plant it belowme. 

"In that moment the flap of a pound pike made me look round, and theroots of the weed upon which I partially depended gave way as I was inthe act of turning. Sir, one's senses are sharpened in deadly peril; asI live now, I distinctly heard the bells of Trinity chiming midnight, asI 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 ofself-possession. Falling as I had, I of course had pitched out somedistance 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 thewall anywhere. I hoped that I could. I felt certain at least therewas some spot where I might get hold with my hands, even if I did notultimately ascend it. 

"I tried the nearest spot. The inclination of the wall was so verticalthat it did not even rest me to lean against it. I felt with my handsand with my feet. Surely, I thought, there must be some fissure likethose in which that ill-omened weed had found a place for its root!

"There was none. My fingers became sore in busying themselves with theharsh and inhospitable stones. My feet slipped from the smooth andslimy masonry beneath the water; and several times my face came in rudecontact with the wall, when my foothold gave way on the instant that Iseemed to have found some diminutive rocky cleat upon which I could staymyself. 

"Sir, did you ever see a rat drowned in a half-filled hogshead-how heswims round, and round, and round; and after vainly trying the sidesagain and again with his paws, fixes his eyes upon the upper rim as ifhe would _look himself_ out of his watery prison?

"I thought of the miserable vermin, thought of him as I had oftenwatched thus his dying agonies, when a cruel urchin of eight or ten. Boys are horribly cruel, sir; boys, women, and savages. All childlikethings are cruel; cruel from a want of thought and from perverseingenuity, although by instinct each of these is so tender. You may nothave observed it, but a savage is as tender to his own young as a boyis to a favorite puppy-the same boy that will torture a kitten out ofexistence. I thought then, I say, of the rat drowning in a half-filledcask of water, and lifting his gaze out of the vessel as he grew moreand 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; buther appearance is, to say the least of it, peculiar to a man floating onhis back in the centre of a stone tank, with a dead wall of some fifteenor twenty feet rising squarely on every side of him!" (The young mansmiled bitterly as he said this, and shuddered once or twice beforehe went on musingly. ) "The last time I had noted the planet with anyemotion she was on the wane. Mary was with me; I had brought her outhere one morning to look at the view from the top of the Reservoir. Shesaid little of the scene, but as we talked of our old childish loves, I saw that its fresh features were incorporating themselves with tendermemories of the past, and I was content. 

"There was a rich golden haze upon the landscape, and as my own spiritsrose amid the voluptuous atmosphere, she pointed to the waning planet, discernible like a faint gash in the welkin, and wondered how long itwould be before the leaves would fall. Strange girl! did she mean torebuke 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 ofnoontide, were there to remind us of 'the-gone-forever'? 'They will allrenew themselves, dear Mary, ' said I, encouragingly, 'and there isone that will ever keep tryst alike with thee and nature through allseasons, if thou wilt but be true to one of us, and remain as now achild of nature. '

"A tear sprang to her eye, and then searching her pocket for hercard-case, she remembered an engagement to be present at Miss Lawson'sopening of fall bonnets at two o'clock!

"And yet, dear, wild, wayward Mary, I thought of her now. You haveprobably outlived this sort of thing, sir; but I, looking at the moon, as I floated there upturned to her yellow light, thought of the lovedbeing 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 spenthis 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 ownunlegended woods, will evoke their yet undetected, haunting spirits? Whopeer with her in prying scrutiny into nature's laws, and challengethe whispers of poetry from the voiceless throat of matter? Who laughmerrily over the stupid guesswork of pedants, that never mingled withthe infinitude of nature, through love exhaustless and all-embracing, aswe have? Poor girl! she will be companionless. 

"Alas! companionless forever-save in the exciting stages of some briskflirtation. She will live hereafter by feeding other hearts with love'slore she has learned from me, and then, Pygmalion-like, grow fond of theimages she has herself endowed with semblance of divinity, until theyseem 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 ofher notes in my pocket!

"I felt chilly as this last reflection crossed my mind, partly atthought of the coroner, partly at the idea of Mary being unwillinglycompelled to wear mourning for me, in case of such a disclosure of ourengagement. It is a provoking thing for a girl of nineteen to have to gointo mourning for a deceased lover at the beginning of her second winterin the metropolis. 

"The water, though, with my motionless position, must have had somethingto do with my chilliness. I see, sir, you think that I tell my storywith great levity; but indeed, indeed I should grow delirious did Iventure to hold steadily to the awfulness of my feelings the greaterpart of that night. I think, indeed, I must have been most of the timehysterical with horror, for the vibrating emotions I have recapitulateddid pass through my brain even as I have detailed them. 

"But as I now became calm in thought, I summoned up again someresolution of action. 

"I will begin at that corner (said I), and swim around the wholeinclosure. I will swim slowly and again feel the sides of the tank withmy feet. If die I must, let me perish at least from well-directed thoughexhausting effort, not sink from mere bootless weariness in sustainingmyself till the morning shall bring relief. 

"The sides of the place seemed to grow higher as I now kept my waterycourse beneath them. It was not altogether a dead pull. I had somevariety of emotion in making my circuit. When I swam in the shadow, itlooked to me more cheerful beyond in the moonlight. When I swam in themoonlight, I had the hope of making some discovery when I should againreach the shadow. I turned several times on my back to rest just wherethose wavy lines would meet. The stars looked viciously bright to mefrom the bottom of that well; there was such a company of them; theywere so glad in their lustrous revelry; and they had such space to movein! I was alone, sad to despair, in a strange element, prisoned, and asolitary gazer upon their mocking chorus. And yet there was nothing elsewith 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 yetformed a part, my poor Mary herself, were forgotten. I thought only ofthe strong man there perishing; of me in my lusty manhood, in the sharpvigor of my dawning prime, with faculties illimitable, with senses allalert, battling there with physical obstacles which men like myself hadbrought together for my undoing. The Eternal could never have willedthis thing! I could not and I would not perish thus. And I grew strongin insolence of self-trust; and I laughed aloud as I dashed the sluggishwater 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 thatI could sacrifice my own life on the instant, to redeem anotherfellow-creature from such a place of horror, from an end so piteous. My soul and my vital spirit seemed in that desperate moment to beseparating; while one in parting grieved over the deplorable fate of theother. 

"And then I prayed! I prayed, why or wherefore I know not. It was notfrom fear. It could not have been in hope. The days of miracles arepast, and there was no natural law by whose providential interposition Icould 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 precedesdissolution to the strong swimmer who, sinking from exhaustion, must atlast add a bubble to the wave as he suffocates beneath the element whichnow denied his mastery? If it were so, how fortunate was it that myfloating rod at that moment attracted my attention as it dashed throughthe water by me. I saw on the instant that a fish had entangled itselfin 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 ofthe 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 itsown weight, showing that the other end must be fast. But the corneredfish, evidently anchored somewhere by that short wire, flounderedseveral times to the surface before I thought of striking out to thespot. 

"The water is low now, and tolerably clear. You may see the very ledgethere, sir, in yonder corner, on which the small end of my rod restedwhen I secured that pike with my hands. I did not take him from theslip-noose, however; but, standing upon the ledge, handled the rod in aworkmanlike manner, as I flung that pound pickerel over the iron railingupon the top' of the parapet. The rod, as I have told you, barelyreached from the railing to the water. It was a heavy, strong bass rodwhich I had borrowed in the 'Spirit of the Times' office; and when Idiscovered that the fish at the end of the wire made a strong enoughknot to prevent me from drawing my tackle away from the railing aroundwhich it twined itself as I threw, why, as you can at once see, I hadbut little difficulty in making my way up the face of the wall withsuch assistance. The ladder which attracted your notice is, as you see, lashed to the iron railing in the identical spot where I thus made myescape; and, for fear of similar accidents, they have placed anotherone in the corresponding corner of the other compartment of the tankever since my remarkable night's adventure in the Reservoir. "