AN AWFUL SIGHT.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2570, 29 December 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

AN AWFUL SIGHT.

Tiik wreck of the City of Chester was n peculiarly sad event, entailing as it did the loss of many lives. Recently n diver was sent down to the wreck to pass an opinion upon the advisability of raising her or recovering the machinery. In the first trip, Hinston, the diver, managed to locate the vessel, and, without sooing any of the damago done, ho returned to the surface, worn and weary with his imuersion, to await another change of the tide on the morrow. On the next morning the diver, sifter all things wero ready, tool; a plunge into the briny, and descended with the heavy weights attached to him with great rapidity. The weights wore none too heavy, although double w hat they weru the previous day. They barely brought him to the bottom, so strung were the under currents and cross tide rips, even at Mich a depth. On arriving at the bottom the diver found that the vessel was lying across the channel, cut in two as if with an iirmenso saw. The water was running through the cut like a mill race. What changed the cool professional inspection to a vision of horror was when the diver advanced along the port side of tho ship towards the bow and looked through the deadlights in the steerage deck ports, A sight met his gaze that froze his blood and mado his "hair to stand on end like quills upon the fretful porcupine." The seeno there presented to his vijw wan of a man with a Swollen and protruding tongue, bulging eyes, and hands extending as if to grasp something that would give him succour from the death that seemed inevitable. Tho attitude of the ghastly corpse, with his staring but sightless eyeballs, gave evidence that in the terrible death struggle hope had not been abandoned until final dissolution. There stood the corpse swaying slightly with tho ebb and flow of tho tide—a frightful but fascinating sight. Horrified by the awful apparition, Hinston made his way along to another port hole further aft, and peering- through ho saw what will romaiu with hi in for life as a fearful remembrance. There, down on his dead hands and knees, was what was once a human being. Although the features were distorted in tho agony of death, to the diver's excited fancy there was on the dead face an expression as if, in the despairof the supreme moment, thedead man had turned to encourage and help another. The body partly rested on the knees and one hand, while the other appeared to be clutching something that the diver could not see distinctly, but which seemed to be a human form. The terror of the situation can easily be imagined. There, 300 feet below the sun kissed surface of the sea, in the gloom of night, stood the strangely caparisoned diver by the wreck of the steamer, the corpses of his fellow beings vainly appealing with ghastly gesture as they swayed in the tide for release from their submerged iron tomb. Tho sight of those horrors was too much for the diver, and he signalled to be drawn up to tho surface. He swears that no fortune, however large, could tompt him to again descend into that frightful submarine grave.—Alta California.