all
sorts of intricacies--turning abrupt corners at the abruptest of
angles--is to be dropped, clear of all obstructions, in a straight
plumb-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 utterable 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 o