Around my arms and shoulders I wore a garment familiarly known as a “cord jacket”—a roundabout of corduroy cloth, such as boys in the humbler ranks of life use to wear, or did when I was a boy. It was my everyday suit, and after my poor mother’s death it had come to be my Sunday wear as well. Let us say nothing to disparage this jacket. I have since then been generally a well-dressed man, and have worn broadcloth of the finest that West of England looms could produce; but all the wardrobe I ever had would not in one bundle weigh as much in my estimation as that corduroy jacket. I think I may say that I owe my life to it.
Well, the jacket chanced to have a good row of buttons upon it—not the common horn, or bone, or flimsy lead ones, such as are worn nowadays, but good, substantial metal buttons—as big as a shilling every way, and with strong iron eyes in them. Well was it for me they were so good and strong.
I had the jacket upon my person, and that, too, was a chance in my favour, for just as like I might not have had it on. When I started to overtake the boat, I had thrown off both jacket and trousers; but on my return from that expedition, and before I had got as badly scared as I became afterwards, I had drawn my clothes on again. The air had turned rather chilly all of a sudden, and this it was that influenced me to re-robe myself. All a piece of good fortune, as you will presently perceive.
What use, then, did I make of the jacket? Tear it up into strips, and with these tie myself to the staff? No. That might have been done, but it would have been rather a difficult performance for a person swimming in a rough sea, and having but one hand free to make a knot with. It would even have been out of my power to have taken the jacket off my body, for the wet corduroy was clinging to my skin as if it had been glued there. I did not do this, then; but I followed out a plan that served my purpose as well—perhaps better. I opened wide my jacket, laid my breast against the signal-staff, and, meeting the loose flaps on the other side, buttoned them from bottom to top.
Fortunately the jacket was wide enough to take in all. My uncle never did me a greater favour in his life—though I did not think so at the time—than when he made me wear an ugly corduroy jacket that was “miles too big” for me.
When the buttoning was finished, I had a moment to rest and reflect—the first for a long while.
So far as being washed away was concerned, I had no longer anything to fear. The post itself might go, but not without me, or I without it. From that time forward I was as much part of the signal-staff as the barrel at its top—indeed, more, I fancy—for a ship’s hawser would not have bound me faster to it than did the flaps of that strong corduroy.
Had the keeping close to the signal-staff been all that was wanted I should have done well enough, but, alas! I was not yet out of danger; and it was not long ere I perceived that my situation was but little improved. Another vast breaker came rolling over the reef, and washed quite over me. In fact, I began to think that I was worse fixed than ever; for in trying to fling myself upward as the wave rose, I found that my fastening impeded me, and hence the complete ducking that I received. When the wave passed on, I was still in my place; but what advantage would this be? I should soon be smothered by such repeated immersions. I should lose strength to hold up, and would then slide down to the bottom of the staff, and be drowned all the same—although it might be said that I had “died by the standard!”