The last scene in his eventful history took place off Cape Cod, when, in a stiff favourable breeze, the captain was impatient to make his port before a shift of wind. Four sullen weeks previous to this had Jackson spent in the forecastle without touching a rope. Every day since leaving New York Jackson had seemed to be growing worse and worse, both in body and mind. “And all the time, though his face grew thinner and thinner, his eyes seemed to kindle more and more, as if he were going to die out at last, and leave them burning like tapers before his corpse.” When, after these four weeks of idleness, Jackson, to the surprise of the crew, came up on deck, his aspect was damp and death-like; the blue hollows of his eyes were like vaults full of snakes; and issuing so unexpectedly from his dark tomb in the forecastle, he looked like a man raised from the dead.
“Before the sailors had made fast the reef-tackle, Jackson was tottering up the rigging; thus getting the start of them, and securing his place at the extreme weather-end of the topsail yard—which in reefing is accounted the place of honour. For it was one of the characteristics of this man that though when on duty he would shy away from mere dull work in a calm, yet in tempest time he always claimed the van and would yield to none.
“Soon we were all strung along the main-topsail yard; the ship rearing and plunging under us like a runaway steed; each man griping his reef-point, and sideways leaning, dragging the sail over towards Jackson, whose business it was to confine the reef corner to the yard.
“His hat and shoes were off; and he rode the yard-arm end, leaning backward to the gale, and pulling at the earing-rope like a bridle. At all times, this is a moment of frantic exertion with sailors, whose spirits seem then to partake of the commotion of the elements as they hang in the gale between heaven and earth; and then it is, too, that they are the most profane.
“‘Haul out to windward!’ coughed Jackson, with a blasphemous cry, and he 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-joints, 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 boats; but instead of that, the next sound that greeted us was, ‘Bear a hand and reef away, men!’ from the mate.”