- end_line
- 15119
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:36.278Z
- extracted_by
- structure-extraction-lambda
- start_line
- 15053
- text
- 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 agonising revulsion came over me as I found myself
utterly sinking. Next moment the force of my fall was expanded; 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 Aegean 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.
- title
- Chunk 2