All
that was said was concerning the disposal of his chest, which, having
been always kept locked, was supposed to contain money. Someone
volunteered to break it open, and distribute its contents, clothing
and all, before the captain should demand it.
While myself and others were endeavouring to dissuade them from this,
all started at a cry from the forecastle. There could be no one there
but two of the sick, unable to crawl on deck. We went below, and
found one of them dying on a chest. He had fallen out of his hammock
in a fit, and was insensible. The eyes were open and fixed, and his
breath coming and going convulsively. The men shrunk from him; but
the doctor, taking his hand, held it a few moments in his, and
suddenly letting it fall, exclaimed, "He's gone!" The body was
instantly borne up the ladder.
Another hammock was soon prepared, and the dead sailor stitched up as
before. Some additional ceremony, however, was now insisted upon,
and a Bible was called for. But none was to be had, not even a Prayer
Book. When this was made known, Antone, a Portuguese, from the
Cape-de-Verd Islands, stepped up, muttering something over the corpse
of his countryman, and, with his finger, described upon the back of
the hammock the figure of a large cross; whereupon it received the
death-launch.
These two men both perished from the proverbial indiscretions of
seamen, heightened by circumstances apparent; but had either of them
been ashore under proper treatment, he would, in all human
probability, have recovered.
Behold here the fate of a sailor! They give him the last toss, and no
one asks whose child he was.
For the rest of that night there was no more sleep. Many stayed on
deck until broad morning, relating to each other those marvellous
tales of the sea which the occasion was calculated to call forth.
Little as I believed in such things, I could not listen to some of
these stories unaffected. Above all was I struck by one of the
carpenter's.
On a voyage to India, they had a fever aboard, which carried off
nearly half the crew in the space of a few days. After this the men
never went aloft in the night-time, except in couples. When topsails
were to be reefed, phantoms were seen at the yard-arm ends; and in
tacking ship, voices called aloud from the tops. The carpenter
himself, going with another man to furl the main-top-gallant-sail in a
squall, was nearly pushed from the rigging by an unseen hand; and his
shipmate swore that a wet hammock was flirted in his face.
