the events of my three years' exile from England appearing to me often like a dream; so utterly different were my experiences during that time to all I had known before or since. I have to look at my oddly constructed spectacles—so totally different in principle from anything known to our opticians—my compressed-air bottle, my shark-spear, my weight-belt, and the few specimens of the coinage of Colymbia I brought away in my pockets, before I am thoroughly persuaded of the reality of it all.
At times a longing for subaqueous life possesses me. My clothes feel oppressive, I seem to be borne down by the weight of my own body, I am tired of halving to preserve the upright position, and I cannot bear the draughts and dust of ordinary life. On these occasions, at the first opportunity, I rush off to the sea, from which my telegraph-station is at no great distance—as I am chief telegraphist at the fashionable sea-side town of Easton-super-Mare—and I dive below the water and amuse myself with some of the gambols I learnt in Colymbia. The low temperature of the German Ocean, however, soon compels me to return to land, teaching me the impossibility of an aquatic life, except in the tepid water of the tropics.
I once attempted to fill my air-bottle with compressed air and oxygen gas, but I could not make it answer. Either I had not hit the right proportions, or I did not understand how to compress the air properly, so that I could not make a comfortable respiration below the water, and I soon gave up the attempt.
I sometimes almost regret that I was in such a hurry to return home, and wish I could re-visit those charming coral grottoes, and mingle in the sports and amusements of my late companions. But I do not
