There was a sailor at work on the rigging low down on the fore-shrouds. I had been watching him for some minutes, observing the carelessness of his pose as he stood poised on a ratline, whilst I thought how utterly hopeless would be the look-out of a man who should fall overboard into the white smother roaring alongside; and I turned my back to walk aft, when I heard a loud cry of “Man overboard!”
I looked; the fellow I had been watching had disappeared! I rushed to the side and saw poor Old Jacob skimming along astern! He had his spectacles and his cap on, and he was swimming like a man, striking out with vigour. He swept to the height of a sea, and his poor white-whiskered face most tragically comical with its spectacles stood out clear as a cameo for a breath, ere it vanished in the hollow. It then disappeared for good.
I glanced forward again and perceived the man whom I thought had fallen into the sea climbing out of the forechains to the part of the rigging where he had been at work.
The mate, coming forward, cried, “Who was it that sang out man overboard?”
“I did, sir,” answered the sailor.
“Step aft!” said the mate.
The fellow dropped on to the deck and approached the officer.
“What do you mean,” cried the mate in a passion, “by raising over a monkey such an alarm as man overboard?”
“I thought it was a man, sir,” answered the sailor. “I had caught sight of him on the jibboom, and believed it was Bill Heenan.”