92. CHAPTER XCII.
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 plum-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 unutterable 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 agonizing revulsion came over me as I
found myself utterly sinking. Next moment the force of my
fall was expended; 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 ægean 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 un-rove
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.
