THE LAST OF THE JACKET.
Already has White-Jacket chronicled the mishaps and inconveniences,
troubles and tribulations of all sorts brought upon him by that
unfortunate but indispensable garment of his. But now it befalls him to
record how this jacket, for the second and last time, came near proving
his shroud.
Of a pleasant midnight, our good frigate, now somewhere off the Capes
of Virginia, was running on bravely, when the breeze, gradually dying,
left us slowly gliding toward our still invisible port.
Headed by Jack Chase, the quarter-watch were reclining in the top,
talking about the shore delights into which they intended to plunge,
while our captain often broke in with allusions to similar
conversations when he was on board the English line-of-battle ship, the
Asia, drawing nigh to Portsmouth, in England, after the battle of
Navarino.
Suddenly an order was given to set the main-top-gallant-stun’-sail, and
the halyards not being rove, Jack Chase assigned to me that duty. Now
this reeving of the halyards of a main-top-gallant-stun’-sail is a
business that eminently demands sharpsightedness, skill, and celerity.
Consider that the end of a line, some two hundred feet long, is to be
carried aloft, in your teeth, if you please, and dragged far out on the
giddiest of yards, and after being wormed and twisted about through all
sorts of intricacies—turning abrupt corners at the abruptest of
angles—is to be dropped, clear of all obstructions, in a straight
plumb-line right down to the deck. In the course of this business,
there is a multitude of sheeve-holes and blocks, through which you must
pass it; often the rope is a very tight fit, so as to make it like
threading a fine cambric needle with rather coarse thread. Indeed, it
is a thing only deftly to be done, even by day. Judge, then, what it
must be to be threading cambric needles by night, and at sea, upward of
a hundred feet aloft in the air.
With the end of the line in one hand, I was mounting the top-mast
shrouds, when our Captain of the Top told me that I had better off
jacket; but though it was not a very cold night, I had been reclining
so long in the top, that I had become somewhat chilly, so I thought
best not to comply with the hint.
Having reeved the line through all the inferior blocks, I went out with
it to the end of the weather-top-gallant-yard-arm, and was in the act
of leaning over and passing it through the suspended jewel-block there,
when the ship gave a plunge in the sudden swells of the calm sea, and
pitching me still further over the yard, threw the heavy skirts of my
jacket right over my head, completely muffling me. Somehow I thought it
was the sail that had flapped, and, under that impression, threw up my
hands to drag it from my head, relying upon the sail itself to support
me meanwhile. Just then the ship gave another sudden jerk, and,
head-foremost, I pitched from the yard. I knew where I was, from the
rush of the air by my ears, but all else was a nightmare. A bloody film
was before my eyes, through which, ghost-like, passed and repassed my
father, mother, and sisters. An utterable nausea oppressed me; I was
conscious of gasping; there seemed no breath in my body. It was over
one hundred feet that I fell—down, down, with lungs collapsed as in
death. Ten thousand pounds of shot seemed tied to my head, as the
irresistible law of gravitation dragged me, head foremost and straight
as a die, toward the infallible centre of this terraqueous globe. All I
had seen, and read, and heard, and all I had thought and felt in my
life, seemed intensified in one fixed idea in my soul. But dense as
this idea was, it was made up of atoms. Having fallen from the
projecting yard-arm end, I was conscious of a collected satisfaction in
feeling, that I should not be dashed on the deck, but would sink into
the speechless profound of the sea.
With the bloody, blind film before my eyes, there was a still stranger
hum in my head, as if a hornet were there; and I thought to myself,
Great God! this is Death! Yet these thoughts were unmixed with alarm.
Like frost-work that flashes and shifts its scared hues in the sun, all
my braided, blended emotions were in themselves icy cold and calm.
So protracted did my fall seem, that I can even now recall the feeling
of wondering how much longer it would be, ere all was over and I
struck. Time seemed to stand still, and all the worlds seemed poised on
their poles, as I fell, soul-becalmed, through the eddying whirl and
swirl of the maelstrom air.
At first, as I have said, I must have been precipitated head-foremost;
but I was conscious, at length, of a swift, flinging motion of my
limbs, which involuntarily threw themselves out, so that at last I must
have fallen in a heap. This is more likely, from the circumstance, that
when I struck the sea, I felt as if some one had smote me slantingly
across the shoulder and along part of my right side.
As I gushed into the sea, a thunder-boom sounded in my ear; my soul
seemed flying from my mouth. The feeling of death flooded over me with
the billows. The blow from the sea must have turned me, so that I sank
almost feet foremost through a soft, seething foamy lull. Some current
seemed hurrying me away; in a trance I yielded, and sank deeper down
with a glide. Purple and pathless was the deep calm now around me,
flecked by summer lightnings in an azure afar. The horrible nausea was
gone; the bloody, blind film turned a pale green; I wondered whether I
was yet dead, or still dying. But of a sudden some fashionless form
brushed my side—some inert, coiled fish of the sea; the thrill of being
alive again tingled in my nerves, and the strong shunning of death
shocked me through.
For one instant an agonising revulsion came over me as I found myself
utterly sinking. Next moment the force of my fall was expanded; and
there I hung, vibrating in the mid-deep. What wild sounds then rang in
my ear! One was a soft moaning, as of low waves on the beach; the other
wild and heartlessly jubilant, as of the sea in the height of a
tempest. Oh soul! thou then heardest life and death: as he who stands
upon the Corinthian shore hears both the Ionian and the Aegean waves.
The life-and-death poise soon passed; and then I found myself slowly
ascending, and caught a dim glimmering of light.
Quicker and quicker I mounted; till at last I bounded up like a buoy,
and my whole head was bathed in the blessed air.
I had fallen in a line with the main-mast; I now found myself nearly
abreast of the mizzen-mast, the frigate slowly gliding by like a black
world in the water. Her vast hull loomed out of the night, showing
hundreds of seamen in the hammock-nettings, some tossing over ropes,
others madly flinging overboard the hammocks; but I was too far out
from them immediately to reach what they threw. I essayed to swim
toward the ship; but instantly I was conscious of a feeling like being
pinioned in a feather-bed, and, moving my hands, felt my jacket puffed
out above my tight girdle with water. I strove to tear it off; but it
was looped together here and there, and the strings were not then to be
sundered by hand. I whipped out my knife, that was tucked at my belt,
and ripped my jacket straight up and down, as if I were ripping open
myself. With a violent struggle I then burst out of it, and was free.
Heavily soaked, it slowly sank before my eyes.
Sink! sink! oh shroud! thought I; sink forever! accursed jacket that
thou art!
“See that white shark!” cried a horrified voice from the taffrail;
“he’ll have that man down his hatchway! Quick! the _grains!_ the
_grains!_”
The next instant that barbed bunch of harpoons pierced through and
through the unfortunate jacket, and swiftly sped down with it out of
sight.
Being now astern of the frigate, I struck out boldly toward the
elevated pole of one of the life-buoys which had been cut away. Soon
after, one of the cutters picked me up. As they dragged me out of the
water into the air, the sudden transition of elements made my every
limb feel like lead, and I helplessly sunk into the bottom of the boat.
Ten minutes after, I was safe on board, and, springing aloft, was
ordered to reeve anew the stun’-sail-halyards, which, slipping through
the blocks when I had let go the end, had unrove and fallen to the
deck.
The sail was soon set; and, as if purposely to salute it, a gentle
breeze soon came, and the Neversink once more glided over the water, a
soft ripple at her bows, and leaving a tranquil wake behind.