59. CHAPTER LIX.
“Off Cape Cod!” said the steward, coming forward from
the quarter-deck, where the captain had just been taking his
noon observation; sweeping the vast horizon with his quadrant,
like a dandy circumnavigating the dress-circle of an
amphitheater with his glass.
Off Cape Cod! and in the shore-bloom that came to us
—even from that desert of sand-hillocks—methought I could
almost distinguish the fragrance of the rose-bush my sisters
and I had planted, in our far inland garden at home. Delicious
odors are those of our mother Earth; which like a
flower-pot set with a thousand shrubs, greets the eager voyager
from afar.
The breeze was stiff, and so drove us along that we turned
over two broad, blue furrows from our bows, as we plowed
the watery prairie. By night it was a reef-topsail-breeze;
but so impatient was the captain to make his port before a
shift of wind overtook us, that even yet we carried a main-top-gallant-sail,
though the light mast sprung like a switch.
In the second dog-watch, however, the breeze became such,
that at last the order was given to douse the top-gallant-sail,
and clap a reef into all three top-sails.
While the men were settling away the halyards on deck,
and before they had begun to haul out the reef-tackles, to
the surprise of several, Jackson came up from the forecastle,
and, for the first time in four weeks or more, took hold of a
rope.
Like most seamen, who during the greater part of a
voyage, have been off duty from sickness, he was, perhaps,
desirous, just previous to entering port, of reminding the
captain of his existence, and also that he expected his wages;
but, alas! his wages proved the wages of sin.
At no time could he better signalize his disposition to
work, than upon an occasion like the present; which generally
attracts every soul on deck, from the captain to the
child in the steerage.
His aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows
of his eyes were like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so
unexpectedly from his dark tomb in the forecastle, he looked
like a man raised from the dead.
Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson
was tottering up the rigging; thus getting the start of them,
and securing his place at the extreme weather-end of the
topsail-yard—which in reefing is accounted the post of honor.
For it was one of the characteristics of this man, that though
when on duty he would shy away from mere dull work in
a calm, yet in tempest-time he always claimed the van, and
would yield it to none; and this, perhaps, was one cause of
his unbounded dominion over the men.
Soon, we were all strung along the main-topsail-yard;
the ship rearing and plunging under us, like a runaway
steed; each man griping his reef-point, and sideways leaning,
dragging the sail over toward Jackson, whose business it was
to confine the reef corner to the yard.
His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm
end, leaning backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope,
like a bridle. At all times, this is a moment of frantic
exertion with sailors, whose spirits seem then to partake of
the commotion of the elements, as they hang in the gale,
between heaven and earth; and then it is, too, that they
are the most profane.
“Haul out to windward!” coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous
cry, and he threw himself back with a violent strain
upon the bridle in his hand. But the wild words were
hardly out of his month, when his hands dropped to his side,
and the bellying sail was spattered with a torrent of blood
from his lungs.
As the man next him stretched out his arm to save,
Jackson fell headlong from the yard, and with a long seethe,
plunged like a diver into the sea.
It was when the ship had rolled to windward, which,
with the long projection of the yard-arm over the side, made
him strike far out upon the water. His fall was seen by the
whole upward-gazing crowd on deck, some of whom were
spotted with the blood that trickled from the sail, while they
raised a spontaneous cry, so shrill and wild, that a blind man
might have known something deadly had happened.
Clutching our reef-points, we hung over the stick, and
gazed down to the one white, bubbling spot, which had closed
over the head of our shipmate; but the next minute it was
brewed into the common yeast of the waves, and Jackson
never arose. We waited a few minutes, expecting an order
to descend, haul back the fore-yard, and man the boat; but
instead of that, the next sound that greeted us was, “Bear
a hand, and reef away, men!” from the mate.
Indeed, upon reflection, it would have been idle to attempt
to save Jackson; for besides that he must have been dead,
ere he struck the sea—and if he had not been dead then,
the first immersion must have driven his soul from his lacerated
lungs—our jolly-boat would have taken full fifteen
minutes to launch into the waves.
And here it should be said, that the thoughtless security
in which too many sea-captains indulge, would, in case of
some sudden disaster befalling the Highlander, have let us
all drop into our graves.
Like most merchant ships, we had but two boats: the
long-boat and the jolly-boat. The long-boat, by far the
largest and stoutest of the two, was permanently bolted
down to the deck, by iron bars attached to its sides. It
was almost as much of a fixture as the vessel's keel. It
was filled with pigs, fowls, firewood, and coals. Over this
the jolly-boat was capsized without a
thole-pin in the gunwales;
its bottom bleaching and cracking in the sun.
Judge, then, what promise of salvation for us, had we
shipwrecked; yet in this state, one merchant ship out of
three, keeps its boats. To be sure, no vessel full of emigrants,
by any possible precautions, could in case of a fatal disaster
at sea, hope to save the tenth part of the souls on board;
yet provision should certainly be made for a handful of survivors,
to carry home the tidings of her loss; for even in the
worst of the calamities that befell patient Job, some one at
least of his servants escaped to report it.
In a way that I never could fully account for, the sailors,
in my hearing at least, and Harry's, never made the slightest
allusion to the departed Jackson. One and all they seemed
tacitly to unite in hushing up his memory among them.
Whether it was, that the severity of the bondage under which
this man held every one of them, did really corrode in their
secret hearts, that they thought to repress the recollection
of a thing so degrading, I can not determine; but certain it
was, that his death was their deliverance; which they celebrated
by an elevation of spirits, unknown before. Doubtless,
this was to be in part imputed, however, to their now
drawing near to their port.
