The man had evidently fallen in his sleep, through the slipping of the rope which had secured him to the rigging; and he must either have been drowned at once or fallen a victim to the maw of one of the sharks, whose movements we could hear in the water still below us.
The accident, however, wakened us all up thoroughly, and we waited anxiously for daylight.
When this came, however, a terrible scene was enacted before our eyes.
No sooner had the rising sun lit up the ocean and enabled us all to see each other distinctly, than I noticed Davis, who was close to Jackson, staring at him in a most peculiar manner.
I never saw in anyone before such a fixed steady glare! The man seemed out of his senses or bewildered by something, for his eyes moved about strangely, although with a savage gleam in them, while his hair appeared to bristle up.
"Well, what is the matter ?" said Jackson at length, after enduring his gaze for a moment or two, waiting for the other to speak.

"Do you want water?
Shall I get you some ?" This apparently broke the spell which was upon the wretched man, whose constitution had been much enfeebled by his drinking habits--making him thus less able to contend against the exposure and privations | we had been subjected to than the rest of us.
The minute Jackson spoke, he uttered a queer sort of half-groan, half- shriek; and having previously, I suppose, untied the rope with which he had been lashed to the rigging, he made a dash at the second mate with both his hands, trying to grip his throat and strangle him.
"You devil!" he cried, foaming at the mouth with passion, "you've taken my place and brought me to this." Jackson easily repulsed his struggles to do him any injury; but, before he and the other sailors could secure the madman, he sprang to his feet and, shouting out something which we could not distinguish, jumped right down among the group of sharks that were still swimming about under the stern.
There was a heavy plunge, followed by a wild scurrying to and fro in the water of the moving fins; and, a moment after, when the sea had got still again, a circle of blood on the surface alone told of the unhappy man's fate.
The incident saddened us all very much, taking away our hopeful thoughts and courage alike; so we waited on listlessly for what we now believed must shortly be our own doom, not a soul speaking a word or even looking at his neighbour for some time afterwards.
Jackson was the first to recover himself.
The sight of the cruel sharks under the ship's counter and the memory of our two shipmates, whom they had already devoured, appeared to prey on his mind and make him furious.
"I can't stand this any longer," he cried.

"I must try and kill one of these brutes, captain, or die in the attempt!" Captain Miles thought he had gone out of his senses too and spoke soothingly to him; but Jackson soon showed that if he had become insane there was a method in his madness.
Rising on his feet, he walked on the top of the bulwarks to the main- shrouds, and clambering out on his hands and knees along these, made his way to where a long wooden handspike, that had been used for heaving round the windlass, was floating under the rigging.
Picking up this and cutting off a good length of the topsail halliards, he came back to where we all were, and proceeded to make a running noose at the end of the rope.
"What are you going to do ?" asked Captain Miles, not quite certain yet of Jackson's sanity.
"I'm going to try to get one of the sharks to come close enough to give him a taste of this handspike," said the stalwart young fellow, drawing himself up to his full height, and looking round with a determined expression on his face that I had never seen there before.

"If I can only get them all to come to the inside of the ship, I shall do for one or two, I know." "Golly, Massa Jackson, me help you wid um knife," exclaimed Jake, entering with much animation in the other's project.

"S'pose we fiss for um wid sumfin', so as make um swim roun' t'oder side ob ship, hey ?" "That's a good idea," said Captain Miles, and he offered Jake his hat to use as a bait, but the darkey shook his head at this.
"No, tankee, Mass' Cap'en, I'se got sumfin' better nor dat," he exclaimed, pulling off the guernsey with which he had sheltered me the first night we were exposed on the wreck.