As she has now reached the irreducible level, a poem [abbreviated] may illustrate the difficulty of her rising again:
A whale of great porosity / and small specific gravity,
Dived down with much velocity / beneath the sea's concavity.
But soon the weight of water / squeezed in his large immensity,
Which varied -- as it ought to -- / Inversely as his density.
It would have moved to pity / an Ogre or a Hessian,
To see poor Spermaceti / thus suffering compression.
At length old million-pounder, / low on a bed of coral,
Gave his last dying flounder, / whereto I pen this moral,
O, let this tale dramatic, / anent the whale Norwegian
And pressure hydrostatic, / warn you, my young collegian,
That down-compelling forces / increase as you get deeper;
The lower down your course is, / the upward path's the steeper.
