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- 2308
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:14.838Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 2252
- text
- knock-down, for it was the most deep, subtle, infernal looking eye,
that I ever saw lodged in a human head. I believe, that by good rights
it must have belonged to a wolf, or starved tiger; at any rate, I would
defy any oculist, to turn out a glass eye, half so cold, and snaky, and
deadly. It was a horrible thing; and I would give much to forget that I
have ever seen it; for it haunts me to this day.
It was impossible to tell how old this Jackson was; for he had no
beard, and no wrinkles, except small crowsfeet about the eyes. He might
have seen thirty, or perhaps fifty years. But according to his own
account, he had been to sea ever since he was eight years old, when he
first went as a cabin-boy in an Indiaman, and ran away at Calcutta. And
according to his own account, too, he had passed through every kind of
dissipation and abandonment in the worst parts of the world. He had
served in Portuguese slavers on the coast of Africa; and with a
diabolical relish used to tell of the _middle-passage,_ where the
slaves were stowed, heel and point, like logs, and the suffocated and
dead were unmanacled, and weeded out from the living every morning,
before washing down the decks; how he had been in a slaving schooner,
which being chased by an English cruiser off Cape Verde, received three
shots in her hull, which raked through and through a whole file of
slaves, that were chained.
He would tell of lying in Batavia during a fever, when his ship lost a
man every few days, and how they went reeling ashore with the body, and
got still more intoxicated by way of precaution against the plague. He
would talk of finding a cobra-di-capello, or hooded snake, under his
pillow in India, when he slept ashore there. He would talk of sailors
being poisoned at Canton with drugged _“shampoo,”_ for the sake of
their money; and of the Malay ruffians, who stopped ships in the
straits of Caspar, and always saved the captain for the last, so as to
make him point out where the most valuable goods were stored.
His whole talk was of this land; full of piracies, plagues and
poisonings. And often he narrated many passages in his own individual
career, which were almost incredible, from the consideration that few
men could have plunged into such infamous vices, and clung to them so
long, without paying the death-penalty.
But in truth, he carried about with him the traces of these things, and
the mark of a fearful end nigh at hand; like that of King Antiochus of
Syria, who died a worse death, history says, than if he had been stung
out of the world by wasps and hornets.
Nothing was left of this Jackson but the foul lees and dregs of a man;
he was thin as a shadow; nothing but skin and bones; and sometimes used
to complain, that it hurt him to sit on the hard chests. And I
sometimes fancied, it was the consciousness of his miserable,
broken-down condition, and the prospect of soon dying like a dog, in
consequence of his sins, that made this poor wretch always eye me with
such malevolence as he did. For I was young and handsome, at least my
mother so thought me, and as soon as I became a little used to the sea,
and shook off my low spirits somewhat, I began to have my old color in
my cheeks, and, spite of misfortune, to appear well and hearty; whereas
_he_ was being consumed by an incurable malady, that was eating up his
vitals, and was more fit for a hospital than a ship.
- title
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