CHAPTER XCII.
THE LAST OF THE JACKET.
Already has White-Jacket chronicled the mishaps and inconveniences,troubles and tribulations of all sorts brought upon him by thatunfortunate but indispensable garment of his. But now it befalls him torecord how this jacket, for the second and last time, came near provinghis shroud.
Of a pleasant midnight, our good frigate, now somewhere off the Capesof 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 similarconversations when he was on board the English line-of-battle ship, theAsia, drawing nigh to Portsmouth, in England, after the battle ofNavarino.
Suddenly an order was given to set the main-top-gallant-stun'-sail, andthe halyards not being rove, Jack Chase assigned to me that duty. Nowthis reeving of the halyards of a main-top-gallant-stun'-sail is abusiness that eminently demands sharpsightedness, skill, and celerity.
Consider that the end of a line, some two hundred feet long, is to becarried aloft, in your teeth, if you please, and dragged far out on thegiddiest of yards, and after being wormed and twisted about through allsorts of intricacies--turning abrupt corners at the abruptest ofangles--is to be dropped, clear of all obstructions, in a straightplumb-line right down to the deck. In the course of this business,there is a multitude of sheeve-holes and blocks, through which you mustpass it; often the rope is a very tight fit, so as to make it likethreading a fine cambric needle with rather coarse thread. Indeed, itis a thing only deftly to be done, even by day. Judge, then, what itmust be to be threading cambric needles by night, and at sea, upward ofa hundred feet aloft in the air.
With the end of the line in one hand, I was mounting the top-mastshrouds, when our Captain of the Top told me that I had better offjacket; but though it was not a very cold night, I had been recliningso long in the top, that I had become somewhat chilly, so I thoughtbest not to comply with the hint.
Having reeved the line through all the inferior blocks, I went out withit to the end of the weather-top-gallant-yard-arm, and was in the actof 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, andpitching me still further over the yard, threw the heavy skirts of myjacket right over my head, completely muffling me. Somehow I thought itwas the sail that had flapped, and, under that impression, threw up myhands to drag it from my head, relying upon the sail itself to supportme meanwhile. Just then the ship gave another sudden jerk, and,head-foremost, I pitched from the yard. I knew where I was, from therush of the air by my ears, but all else was a nightmare. A bloody filmwas before my eyes, through which, ghost-like, passed and repassed myfather, mother, and sisters. An utterable nausea oppressed me; I wasconscious of gasping; there seemed no breath in my body. It was overone hundred feet that I fell--down, down, with lungs collapsed as indeath. Ten thousand pounds of shot seemed tied to my head, as theirresistible law of gravitation dragged me, head foremost and straightas a die, toward the infallible centre of this terraqueous globe. All Ihad seen, and read, and heard, and all I had thought and felt in mylife, seemed intensified in one fixed idea in my soul. But dense asthis idea was, it was made up of atoms. Having fallen from theprojecting yard-arm end, I was conscious of a collected satisfaction infeeling, that I should not be dashed on the deck, but would sink intothe speechless profound of the sea.
With the bloody, blind film before my eyes, there was a still strangerhum 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, allmy braided, blended emotions were in themselves icy cold and calm.
So protracted did my fall seem, that I can even now recall the feelingof wondering how much longer it would be, ere all was over and Istruck. Time seemed to stand still, and all the worlds seemed poised ontheir poles, as I fell, soul-becalmed, through the eddying whirl andswirl 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 mylimbs, which involuntarily threw themselves out, so that at last I musthave fallen in a heap. This is more likely, from the circumstance, thatwhen I struck the sea, I felt as if some one had smote me slantinglyacross the shoulder and along part of my right side.
As I gushed into the sea, a thunder-boom sounded in my ear; my soulseemed flying from my mouth. The feeling of death flooded over me withthe billows. The blow from the sea must have turned me, so that I sankalmost feet foremost through a soft, seething foamy lull. Some currentseemed hurrying me away; in a trance I yielded, and sank deeper downwith a glide. Purple and pathless was the deep calm now around me,flecked by summer lightnings in an azure afar. The horrible nausea wasgone; the bloody, blind film turned a pale green; I wondered whether Iwas yet dead, or still dying. But of a sudden some fashionless formbrushed my side--some inert, coiled fish of the sea; the thrill ofbeing alive again tingled in my nerves, and the strong shunning ofdeath shocked me through.
For one instant an agonising revulsion came over me as I found myselfutterly sinking. Next moment the force of my fall was expanded; andthere I hung, vibrating in the mid-deep. What wild sounds then rang inmy ear! One was a soft moaning, as of low waves on the beach; the otherwild and heartlessly jubilant, as of the sea in the height of atempest. Oh soul! thou then heardest life and death: as he who standsupon the Corinthian shore hears both the Ionian and the Aegean waves.The life-and-death poise soon passed; and then I found myself slowlyascending, 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 nearlyabreast of the mizzen-mast, the frigate slowly gliding by like a blackworld in the water. Her vast hull loomed out of the night, showinghundreds of seamen in the hammock-nettings, some tossing over ropes,others madly flinging overboard the hammocks; but I was too far outfrom them immediately to reach what they threw. I essayed to swimtoward the ship; but instantly I was conscious of a feeling like beingpinioned in a feather-bed, and, moving my hands, felt my jacket puffedout above my tight girdle with water. I strove to tear it off; but itwas looped together here and there, and the strings were not then to besundered 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 openmyself. 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 thatthou 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 andthrough the unfortunate jacket, and swiftly sped down with it out ofsight.
Being now astern of the frigate, I struck out boldly toward theelevated pole of one of the life-buoys which had been cut away. Soonafter, one of the cutters picked me up. As they dragged me out of thewater into the air, the sudden transition of elements made my everylimb feel like lead, and I helplessly sunk into the bottom of the boat.
Ten minutes after, I was safe on board, and, springing aloft, wasordered to reeve anew the stun'-sail-halyards, which, slipping throughthe 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 gentlebreeze soon came, and the Neversink once more glided over the water, asoft ripple at her bows, and leaving a tranquil wake behind.