I thought that we soon parted company from each other, and, all alone, I continued to sink, sink, sink, until, at last, I could sink no deeper. I was suspended, as it were: I had taken my exact position in the scale of gravity, and I lay floating upon the condensed and buoyant fluid, many hundred fathoms below the surface. I thought to myself, "Here, then, am I to lie in pickle, until I am awakened." It was quite dark, but by the spirit I saw as plain as if it were noon-day; and I perceived objects in the water, which gradually increased in size. They were sharks, in search of prey. They attacked me furiously; and as they endeavoured to drag me out of my canvas cerements, I whirled round and round as their flat noses struck against my sides. At last they succeeded. In a moment, I was dismembered without the least pain, for pain had been left behind me in the world from which I had been released. One separated a leg, with his sharp teeth, and darted away north; another an arm, and steered south; each took his portion, and appeared to steer away in a different direction, as if he did not wish to be interrupted in his digestion. "Help yourselves, gentlemen, help yourselves," mentally exclaimed I; "but if Mr Young is correct in his `Night Thoughts,' where am I to fumble for my bones, when they are to be forthcoming?" Nothing was left but my head, and that, from superior gravity, continued to sink, gyrating in its descent, so as to make me feel quite giddy: but it had not gone far, before one, who had not received his portion, darted down upon it perpendicularly, and as the last fragment of me rolled down his enormous gullet, the spirit fled, and all was darkness and oblivion.