The cry of "A man overboard!—a man overboard!" now rang through the ship. Every one present sprang to their feet, and rushed to the side of the vessel, looking about in all directions, to see the missing individual rise to the surface of the water, and Flora among the rest.
Presently a black head emerged from the waves, and two hands were held up in a deplorable bewildered manner, and the great blank face looked towards the skies with a glance of astonishment, as if the owner could not yet comprehend his danger, and scarcely realized his awful situation. He looked just like a seal, or some uncouth monster of the deep, who having ventured to the surface, was confounded by looking the sun in the face, and was too much frightened to retreat.
Lyndsay, the moment he heard the man plunge into the sea, had seized a coil of rope which lay upon the deck, and running forward, hurled it with a strong arm in the direction in which Muckleroy had disappeared. Just at the critical moment when the apparition of the shoemaker rose above the waves, it fell within the length of his grasp. The poor fellow, now fully awake to the horrors of his fate, seized it with convulsive energy, and was drawn to the side of the vessel, where two sailors were already hanging in the chains, with another rope fixed with a running noose at one end, which they succeeded in throwing over his body and drawing him safely to the deck.
And then, the joy of the poor wife, who had just recovered from her swoon, at receiving her dead to life, was quite affecting, while he, regardless of her caresses, only shook his wet garments, exclaiming—"My jacket! my jacket, Nell, I have lost my jacket. What can a man do, wantin' a jacket?"
This speech was received with a general roar of laughter: the poor woman and her spouse being the only parties from whom it did not win a smile.
"Confound the idiot!" cried old Boreas; "he thinks more of his old jacket, that was not worth picking off a dunghill, than of his wife and his own safety. Why man," turning to the shoemaker, who was dripping like a water-dog, "what tempted you to jump into the sea when you could not swim a stroke?"
"My jacket," continued the son of Crispin, staring wildly at his saturated garments: "it was the only one I had. Oh, my jacket, my jacket!"
Strange that such a dull piece of still life should risk his life for a jacket—and an old one that had seen good service and was quite threadbare; but necessity replies, it was his only garment. A rich person can scarcely comprehend the magnitude of the loss of an only jacket to a poor man.
No one was more amused by the adventure of the jacket than Stephen Corrie, who wrote a comic song on the subject, which Duncan the fiddler set to music, and used to sing, to the great annoyance of the hero of the tale, whenever he ventured in his shirt sleeves upon the deck.
The Duncans, for there were two of them, were both highlanders, and played with much skill on the violin. They were two fine, honest, handsome fellows, who, with their music and singing kept all the rest alive. Directly the sun set, the lively notes of their fiddles called young and old to the deck, and Scotch reels, highland flings, and sailors' hornpipes were danced till late at night—often until the broad beams of the rising sun warned the revellers that it was time to rest.