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- threw himself back with a violent strain upon the bridle in his hand.
But the wild words were hardly out of his mouth, 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 longboat 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.
CHAPTER LX.
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