For an instant I thought the Gulf Stream in my head was whirling me away to eternity; but the next moment I found myself standing; the yard had descended to the _cup_; and shaking myself in my jacket, I felt that I was unharmed and alive.
Who had done this?
who had made this attempt on my life?
thought I, as I ran down the rigging.
"Here it comes!--Lord! Lord! here it comes! See, see! it is white as a hammock." "Who's coming ?" I shouted, springing down into the top; "who's white as a hammock ?" "Bless my soul, Bill it's only White-Jacket--that infernal White-Jacket again!" It seems they had spied a moving white spot there aloft, and, sailor-like, had taken me for the ghost of the cooper; and after hailing me, and bidding me descend, to test my corporeality, and getting no answer, they had lowered the halyards in affright.
In a rage I tore off the jacket, and threw it on the deck.
"Jacket," cried I, "you must change your complexion! you must hie to the dyers and be dyed, that I may live.

I have but one poor life, White-Jacket, and that life I cannot spare.

I cannot consent to die for _you_, but be dyed you must for me.

You can dye many times without injury; but I cannot die without irreparable loss, and running the eternal risk." So in the morning, jacket in hand, I repaired to the First Lieutenant, and related the narrow escape I had had during the night.

I enlarged upon the general perils I ran in being taken for a ghost, and earnestly besought him to relax his commands for once, and give me an order on Brush, the captain of the paint-room, for some black paint, that my jacket might be painted of that colour.
"Just look at it, sir," I added, holding it lip; "did you ever see anything whiter?
Consider how it shines of a night, like a bit of the Milky Way.