A SAILOR’S WILL.
After a troublesome spell of stormy weather there happened a fine
afternoon, and when the evening drew around the shadow was richer in
stars than any tropic night I ever beheld. The wind was light; the ocean
breathed in a long swell from the north; the atmosphere was frosty, but
sweet and comfortably endurable.
We had sent down our royal yards, yet to-night was a night for royals
and studding sails--a night to be made the most of. The ocean was off
guard, asleep, and easily might we have stolen past the slumbering
sentinel, clothed from truck to waterway in the tall, wide wings we had
expanded in the north.
But the old villain was not to be trusted; twas but a snort and a stir
with him down here, _then_ a hideous black cloud flying at your ship,
and hail and wind to which the stoutest must give his back.
So this evening we flapped slowly onward under topgallant sails and
courses, and the long naked poles of the royal masts made a wreck of the
fabric to the eye up aloft as they swung the dim buttons of their trucks
under the stars.
It was seven o’clock. I had an hour to smoke my pipe in before my watch
came round. I stood on the brig’s quarter, leaning upon the bulwark
rail. The sea ran in thick, noiseless folds like black grease, and I
hung smoking and hearkening to a queer respiration out upon the
water--the noise of the blowing of grampuses sunk in the blackness.
Presently my name was pronounced. I turned, and by the light in the
companion way beheld the figure of the boy Jimmy.
“What is it?”
“The captain wants to see you, master.”
I knocked the fire out of my pipe.
“What is wrong?” said I, in a voice of awe, for even as the lad had
called, my thoughts were busy with the dying man, and my heart heavy
with sadness.
“The captain’s very bad to-night, master.”
This was the third day Greaves had kept his berth without attempting or
expressing a wish to leave it. During these days he had been more than
usually rambling and incoherent, insomuch that my visits had been brief
because there was nothing to be said. I had looked in upon him merely to
satisfy myself on his condition. I knew not how I should find him now,
and sat me down on a chest beside his bunk. Galloon lay on the deck. The
lamp gave a strong light; Greaves saw me and I him very plain. There was
an intelligence in his looks that had been wanting--his countenance was
knitted into its old expression of mind, as though by an effort of the
faculties.
“D’ye know, Fielding, I fear that I am very ill?” said he in a weak
voice.
“You do not feel worse, I hope?” said I.
“I don’t like my sensations. I don’t understand them. It has crossed my
mind that I am dying.”
“Ill you are and have been, captain; yet less ill to-night, it seems to
me, than you were yesterday. God preserve you! What can I do? Here we
are, out upon the wild sea, nothing but Spanish ports to make for; but
say the word and I’ll head the brig for the port you shall name. We must
forfeit our dollars, but your life stands first.”
“It is too late,” he said.
“For God’s sake don’t say that! Ought I to have sought help on the
coast?”
“It is too late,” he repeated, and sank into a silence that lasted a
minute or two.
“Have you believed that I am dying?” said he.
“I have believed you ill--sometimes very ill.”
“It will be hard to die here, all this way from home. The launch over
the side makes a deep burial. I buried a man hereabouts last voyage,
and---- How deep is it? Has he touched the bottom yet?--with a
twenty-four pound shot at his heels too.”
“Don’t think of such things.”
“I am not afraid to die, but I wish there was a priest aboard--someone
to help me to steady my thoughts. I believe in all that should make a
man a good Christian. What’s the time?”
“A little after eight, sir.”
“What noise of hissing is that?”
“Grampuses have been blowing out to larboard; some may have come
alongside.”
“Ay, me!” he cried. “There is the hand of the devil in this snatching
away of my life _now_, when the days show brightly, and my head is full
of plans of goodness. How about the money, Fielding?”
“What money, sir?”
“Mine, mine,” he exclaimed with irritation. “Yours you’ll keep and
welcome, and don’t let the spending of it damn ye. Mine, I say. What’s
to become of it? If I die, what’s to become of my money? Must it go to
Tulp? By Isten, no, then!” he exclaimed, with a rather crazy laugh.
“Have you no relations?”
“Tulp’s no relation.”
“Have you no relation whatever?”
“None, I tell ye.”
“Few men can say that,” said I doubtingly.
“Fielding, I am dying, and I will leave my money to God.”
He spoke faintly, his appearance was very alarming; his eyes moved
slowly and strangely.
“Tell me your wishes? If I live they shall be carried out.”
He repeated in a low voice that he would leave his money to God.
“In what form can this be done?” said I, fearing that his mind was
giving way again.
“I will leave my money to the Church,” he answered.
“What Church?”
He made no answer.
“What Church, Captain?” I repeated, bending my face to his.
“Rome,” he answered.
“In what religion did your mother die?” said I.
His eyes ceased to wander, he gazed at me steadfastly; but as he was
silent, I again asked him in what faith his mother had died.
“She was a Protestant,” he answered; “she belonged to the Church of
England.”
“Leave your money to the Church in whose faith your mother sleeps.
Should not a mother’s faith be the holiest of all to a child? Captain,
there is no better faith than was your mother’s.”
“Who talks to me of my mother?” said he. “She married Bartholomew Tulp.
Well, she was a very good woman. She has gone to God. She was poor--she
married for a home, and to help me, as I have often since believed. I
will leave my money to her memory. What time is it?”
I again told him the time.
“How is the weather?”
“A fine, quiet night.”
“There is water in that can; give me a drink.”
When he had drunk he asked me to lift the dog, that he might pat his
head. He feebly, with a pale, thin hand, touched the ears of the poor
beast; and as he did so, I thought of that time when I lay in a hammock,
trembling and helpless, with a weakness as of death, and when he had
lifted Galloon that I might kiss the dog that had saved my life.
“Who has the watch?”
“Bol, sir.”
“Will you write for me, Fielding?”
“Anything will I do for you.”
I seated myself at the little table that was near his bunk. It was
furnished with ink and quills. I opened a drawer and found paper, and
waited for him to speak.
“Tulp shall not have my money,” said he; “the old rogue is rich, and he
has a noble share in what is below. Too much--too much. And yet it was
his venture. Let me be reasonable. He shall not have one dollar of my
money, by God! If I die, and the money goes home, he will take it. I
would see him damned before he touched a dollar of my money. Hasn’t he
enough?”
“More than enough.”
“I will leave the money to the memory of my mother. The thought comforts
me. I was her only child--I left her very young; I was not to her as I
should have been. Write, Fielding.”
He dictated, but ramblingly, with so much of incoherence, indeed,
breaking off to talk to himself, to ask the time, to whisper some sea
adventure, which he would go half through with and then drop, that, even
if my memory carried what he said, it would be mere silliness in the
reading. However, his wish was to dictate a will, which was to be
embodied in a very few sentences. So when he had made an end and lay
still, I wrote as follows:
‘Brig _Black Watch_, at sea. February the 24th, 1815. This is the
last will and testament of me, Michael Greaves, master of the above
brig--at the time of signing this in full command of my senses. I
hereby bequeath all the money I have in the world to the Church of
England, in memory of my mother; and I desire that the money I thus
bequeath may be devoted to a memorial that shall forever perpetuate
the love I bear to the memory of my mother, whose soul is with
God.’
It was the best form of will I could devise, knowing little of such
matters; but since it was his wish that the money should be dedicated to
God, most reasonable was it that I, as an Englishman, should wish to see
it bequeathed to the Church of my own and of his country. And I was the
warmer in this desire in that the money was Spanish; by which I mean
that nothing could be more proper than that the dollars of the most
bigoted people in all creation, in religious matters, should go to the
support of the purest, the most liberal, the very noblest of all
churches. Bear ye in mind, it was the year 1815; when our esteem of the
foreigner and his faith was not as it is.
“What have you written?” said he.
I read aloud.
“It will do,” he exclaimed; “read it again.” I did so.
“Will not thirty thousand pounds build a church?” said he.
“It will build a ship,” said I. “I know nothing of the cost of building
a church.”
“Write down that I want a church built,” said he.
This I did.
“Write down,” said he, “that I leave one thousand pounds to you, for
having saved my life.”
I hesitated and looked at him, and then said, “My dear friend, I thank
you, but you have put enough in my way.”
“Write it down, write it down,” he cried. I wrote as he dictated. “Now,”
said he, “can I sign?” and he lifted his hand as though feeling for
strength to control a pen.
I opened the door and called to Jimmy, who was putting wine and biscuit
on the table. I asked the lad if he could write. He answered, “No.” I
put a pen into Greaves’ hand, and he scratched his signature under the
three clauses I had written down. His vision was dim, and he saw with
difficulty when it came to his writing, but on my directing the point of
the pen in his hand to the paper he wrote with some vigor. I bade Jimmy
take notice of what I was about to read, and when I had read I signed my
name, and the lad made his mark, which I witnessed.
All this was very innocent. I was a sailor, with no more knowledge of
the law than a ship’s figurehead, and little dreamed that I was
rendering my interest in poor Greaves’ will worthless by attesting it.
But, as things turned out, it mattered nothing, as you shall read.
Jimmy went into the cabin to wait on the lady.
“Will you, or shall I keep this will?” said I.
“You,” he answered. “I give you Galloon,” said he after a pause, and now
speaking with the faintness I had observed in him when I first arrived.
“You’ll love him, Fielding.”
I put my cheek to the dog’s face. “I am glad to have your wishes,” said
I. “Should you be taken before we get home I shall know what to do, if I
outlive you.” He feebly smiled.
“Oh, but the risks of the sea are many--_we_ know that. A man goes with
his life in one hand. You are far from dead yet. It is I who may be the
dying man.”
“I wish there was a priest on board to settle my doubts,” said he,
scarcely above a whisper, and now his eyes began to look strangely
again.
“What are your doubts?”
“Is there a hell, Fielding?”
“Not for sailors, captain.”
He steadied his eyes, and smiled with an odd parting of his lips, that
was like the first of a gape.
“Not for sailors, sir,” said I. “Hell is here for them. There can’t be
two hells for the same man.”
“I’d like to think that,” said he. “I am afraid of going to hell. I’ve
been afraid of dying ever since they put the notion of the devil into my
head. I told ye just now I wasn’t afraid of death. Nor am I, when I
forget the devil. I forgot him then. Now he’s back again. Give me some
water and open the scuttle--it’s grown blasted hot, hasn’t it?”
He sat up on a sudden, and immediately afterward sank back. Again I gave
him to drink, and opened the scuttle as he desired.
He now rambled. Some of his imaginations were wild and striking. They
even struck an awe into me, though perhaps much of their impressiveness
lay in their falling from dying lips. His poor head ran on religion--and
sometimes he was to be saved, and sometimes he was to be damned; and
then he would forget, and babble about what he meant to do when he got
home; how so much of his money would go in giving clothes and food to
the poor, and how he’d collect many kinds of animals and use them well,
fearing them, for who was to tell what souls of men they contained; and
there might be a human sorrow in the bleat of a goat, and a man’s
passion in the silence of a suffering horse.
I cannot tell you what he talked about. It matters not. Yet one strange
thing that happened this evening let me note. It was this: he had sunk
into silence, and I was about to quit his cabin for the deck. He had
been talking very wildly, and sometimes, to my young, green,
superstitious mind, almost terrifyingly; then had fallen still all in a
moment, his eyes closed, his lips shut. I stooped to look at him, then
turned to go, as I have said. My hand was on the door, when I heard his
voice:
“Fielding, will ye sing?”
I went back wondering, and asked him what he said.
“Will ye sing?” he exclaimed.
I supposed this a part of his sad, dying nonsense, yet, to humor him,
answered:
“I will sing for you, captain.”
“Sing me ‘Tom Bowling,’” said he.
I sat down, and Galloon laid his head on my knee. My voice was broken,
but I strove to put a cheerfulness into it, and sang the opening verse
of “Tom Bowling.” He lay quiet while I sang. When I came to the end of
the verse, he looked at me and, when I paused, believing he had had
enough, he sang the closing lines in a feeble voice:
“Faithful below he did his duty,
And now he’s gone aloft.”
When he ceased, his eyes were full of tears. He put out his hand, and I
took it, myself weeping, for the sight of his tears had unmanned me. I
felt a gentle pressure. He then turned his face to the ship’s side, and
after I had watched by him for about five minutes, during which he
breathed quietly but spoke not, I passed out and went on deck.
Whether Greaves feared death or not I don’t know. I will not, however,
believe he thought he was dying. Frequently will a man tell you that he
is dying when his belief is the other way. His fears betray the secret
of his hopes.
Happily, from this night Greaves lost his senses, sank into a lethargy,
and lay motionless as death for hours; then awoke, but never to
consciousness, though often he would call out from amid the darkness
that lay upon him, with so much reason in his exclamations as made me
imagine his mind was returned. Whatever he said that had sense was
nautical. Once he put the brig about in his wanderings. He startled me,
who had entered his cabin but a minute or two before, by a sharp, hard
cry of:
“Ready about!”
He followed on with the proper orders, pausing with all the judgment you
can imagine for the intervals, and, when he supposed he had got the brig
on the other tack, the bowlines triced out, and the gear coiled away, he
whispered awhile briskly:
“Now she stumps it,” said he. “Clap the jigger on that main-tack, my
lads! Get a small pull of the weather main royal brace. Flatten in that
jib sheet there. Damme, Mr. Walker, we don’t want balloons on our jib
booms.”
So would he wander, and all that he said in _this_ way was sensible.
When he lost his mind the lady Aurora offered to nurse him. He did not
recognize her; and, down to the hour of his death, she was in and out of
his cabin, dressing little delicate messes of fowl and tortoise and the
like in the caboose, feeding him, damping the sweat from his face,
ministering to him in many ways. He would have died quickly but for her.
Jimmy had no knowledge of feeding or preparing food for him. Not a soul
of the rough junks forward were fit for such work; and the business of
the brig kept my hands full.
The day before Greaves died, I entered his cabin, and found the lady on
her knees beside his bunk. She looked slowly round on my entering,
crossed herself, rose, and, putting her hand upon my arm, whispered in
English:
“Shall he not die Catolique?”
I answered with one of those shrugs which I had got from her.
“He is Catolique,” said she.
“No,” said I.
“But, yes--but, yes.”
“Very well,” said I.
“He shall die Catolique,” said she, “or----”
And now, wanting words, she signed to let me know that, if he did not
die Catolique, his soul went in danger. Happily, we had not language for
argument. Her eyes sparkled; she looked at me hotly. There was the
temper of the religious enthusiast in the whole manner of her.
“Her uncle is a priest,” thought I. “There may be the blood of an
Inquisitor in this fine woman,” I thought. “Ay, and even though she was
my mistress, and I her impassioned sweetheart, and even though she loved
me with the jealous heat of a Spanish heart, all the same is she just
the sort of party to order me,” thought I, “to the stake, and watch me
with an unmoved face while I was doing to a turn, if she supposed the
burnt-offering of a shell-back would help her with the saints and give
her Jack’s soul a true course.”
Here poor Greaves, who had lain motionless, suddenly let out. He seemed
to be hailing a boat.
“Why the devil don’t you pull your larboard oars? You infernal lubbers!
what’s the good of _all_ hands pulling to starboard? Look at the boat.
_This_ is the ship, you fools--there! _Now_ ye’ve done it. Plague take
ye. Twenty stone of prime beef foundered! Lower a boat and pick ’em up.
Lower a boat and pick--lower a boat--lower----”
“He shall die Catolique,” said Miss Aurora.
In what faith he departed this life is known to his Maker. Greaves went
under hatches next day, in the afternoon, at one o’clock. A strong wind
was blowing, a high sea running, it was bitterly cold; the windward
horizon was sullen with the black shadows of clouds, out of which the
dark green seas ridged in hills, with such a toss of spray from every
foaming head that the wind sparkled with the flying brine. The brig
labored heavily. She was under small canvas, and the sea broke against
her, in a sound of guns. I was watching her anxiously, intending, if it
came harder, to heave her to. The blubbered face of Jimmy showed in the
companion way.
“Master,” said he, “the captain’s dead.”
I spied Bol to leeward of the caboose, and bawled to him to lay aft, and
stepped below.
Yes, Greaves lay dead. The peace of eternity was upon his face, the
peace that comes not until the noise of the clock falls upon the deaf
ear. At every other moment the thick glass scuttle, through which the
daylight came, rolled in thunder under water, and was hidden in
whiteness; then a dark green shadow was in the cabin; then the light
brightened, as the weeping glass was lifted. It was like being buried in
the sea with the dead man, to stand in that cabin and listen to the roar
of water round about, and mark the green dimness like daylight dying
out.
I stood looking at Greaves. Beside me crouched Galloon. Every now and
again the dog uttered a sort of low, sobbing howl. How did he know that
his master was dead? _I_ can’t tell. He crouched beside me, I say,
weeping in his way, and I dare swear that he better knew the captain was
dead than I, who indeed guessed him dead by his looks, though I would
not have buried him in that hour for a million.
I drew the head of the blanket over the poor man’s face, and went to the
door, with a call to Galloon to follow. The dog did not stir.
“Come,” cried I, and approached him. He growled fiercely, and I saw
danger in his eye. “Well, poor beast,” said I in my heart, “you shall
watch and mourn in your fashion;” and I came away, and sat down at the
cabin table, and leaned my head upon my hand to let pass an oppression
of tears that had visited my throat and was darkening my sight.
I had saved his life, and he mine; we had spent many weeks together,
exchanged many thoughts, together paced out many a long hour of the day
and night; he had been my friend, shipmate, messmate, and I knew not how
warm was my love for him until now. The sea brings men close together,
and there is the companionship of peril and a sense of isolation and
remoteness that is binding. A man is missed at sea as he never can be
missed ashore. Ashore is a vast field filled with distractions for the
mind: the greatest ship is but a speck on the deep; you may walk the
length of her, and descend to the depth of her in a few minutes, and
over the side is the monotony of heaven and water, thrusting the spirit
back upon its imprisonment of bulwarks, and compelling the mind to
perpetual consideration of all the life that is contained within the
narrow walls of timber.
I raised my head and found the lady Aurora sitting opposite me. She may
have come from her cabin quietly or not; her movements were not to have
been heard amid the straining sounds of that tossing interior.
“The poor captain is dead,” said she.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Blessed Virgin, he has suffered. He is now at peace,” said she, partly
in English, partly in Spanish.
“Were you with him when he died?” I called to the boy, who stood at the
foot of the companion steps, white and grinning.
“Yes, master.”
“Come here, my lad. Did he speak before he died?”
“Master, he lifted up his right hand and sung out ‘from under!’ then
rattled.”
“How did you know he was dead?”
“I saw father die, master, and last voyage the cook died, and I saw him
go.”
Miss Aurora looked as if she would have me interpret Greaves’ dying
exclamation. I drained a tumbler of rum-and-water to cheer me, and going
on deck found Yan Bol standing beside the companion way waiting.
“Vhas der captain deadt?” said he.
“He is dead,” I answered.
“Und vhat vas to become of her share, Mr. Fielding?”
“He’ll not be cold for some hours, and he keeps his share till we bury
him.”
I walked away. When I turned the Dutchman still stood where I had left
him, looking toward me. He then rolled forward and entered the caboose.
There was no more weight of wind. In a few hours’ time I should be
keeping the brig more off for the Horn. I forget our latitude on the day
of Greaves’ death. It was something south of the parallel of the Horn,
and our longitude was right for a shift of the helm.
I walked the deck, thinking much of Greaves. What had killed him? He had
been long a-dying, ever since his accident, indeed. No doubt that injury
betwixt his ribs had brought about his death, and I reckoned his
craziness to have been a consequence of that injury, though to be sure,
his mind, as we would say at sea, had been launched with a list. But he
was dead, and I was alone in the brig with a treasure of half a million
of silver to carry home, and with a crew of men I did not trust.
No, it was not Bol’s question that had startled me. The moment I came on
deck, after leaving the dead captain, I realized my loneliness, and all
my old misgivings stormed in upon me till, I give you my word, I stood
with my back upon the helm, panting as after a run, with the sudden
passion of anxiety that uprose.
Presently, after walking and reasoning myself into something of
soberness, I thought I would have Yan Bol aft. I called; he put his head
out of the caboose; I beckoned, and he approached, thrusting his pipe
into his breeches pocket. It was his watch below, and he had a right to
smoke on deck.
“The captain is dead,” said I. “Let us talk of the affairs of the brig.”
“I vhas villing to talk, but you valked off, Mr. Fielding.”
“I walked off because I was fresh from the side of a friend who is
dead.”
“I vhas sorry, too. He vhas a goodt sailor. When did you bury him?”
“To-morrow.”
“He vhas steeched up by me himself. I makes a good shob of him out of
respect to you, Mr. Fielding.”
“What change is to come about? If I have charge of the brig, I can’t
keep watch.”
“If you vhas not in sharge, Mr. Fielding, der brick vhas der _Flying
Doytchman_.”
“You’ll be chief mate, then. Whom can you trust to act as second--to
keep a lookout, I mean?”
“Plindfold me, und der man I touch is der man you vant. Vere der eggs
vhas all ash one der voorst vhas der best.”
“Let the men choose for themselves, then.”
“Dot shall be---- Und vhat vhas our port, Mr. Fielding?”
“Our port? Our port?--why--why----” I staggered in my speech, for, now
that Greaves was dead, what name was I to give the place we were bound
to?
“Vhas she to be Amsterdam?”
“No. You and I will talk of this later on.”
He nodded emphatically, a large and heavy nod of approbation.
He left me after we had been talking for about half an hour. I then
heard a melancholy noise of crying in the cabin. I went below, and found
Galloon at Greaves’ door, howling dismally. I told Jimmy to let the dog
in, and resumed my walk and lonely lookout on deck. Lord, what a
melancholy day was that in my life! The desolation of the sea was in it.
I see that ocean now--its hills of liquid lead pour into foam, the gray
shape of an albatross hovers off the quarter, there is a constant flash
and leap of hissing whiteness at the bow, and the black running gear is
curved to leeward by the gale.
I looked into Greaves’ cabin before sitting down to supper. Galloon lay
upon the breast of the dead man and whined dismally when I entered. I
uncovered the face to make sure of the death in it, and the dog, when he
saw his master’s face, barked low and strangely, and licked the cheek of
the dead. I hid the face once more and went out. The dog would not
follow.
Little passed at table between the lady Aurora and me. The gloom of
death was upon us, and I was too cold and sad at heart, too oppressed
with anxiety, to attempt one of our broken and motioning talks.
At eight o’clock Bol came aft to stitch up the body in canvas. With him
came William Galen, a freckled countryman of Bol’s. I watched the brig
while they went below; very dark was the night, with a sort of swarming
of the seas to the vessel that gave her the most uncomfortable motion I
ever remember. But the wind was sinking, and by this hour we had shaken
a reef out of the topsails and had set the main topgallant sails, and
the little ship rushed along wet and in blackness fore-and-aft, her head
now something to the south of east, fair for the passage of the Horn.
Bol and his mate had not been above three minutes in the cabin when I
heard a commotion below--the furious barking of a dog, deep roars, and
thunderous shouts and Dutch oaths. I rushed into the cabin, crying to
the sailors not to hurt the poor beast.
“She has tore mine breek,” shouted Bol, “und bitten Galen to der bone of
her thumb.”
I bade them stand out of sight, and Jimmy and I went in; but the dog was
not to be coaxed away from his master. There was nothing for it but to
smother and carry him out in a blanket, and let him loose in an adjacent
berth. The struggle with the beast capsized my stomach. He had crouched
upon the dead body, and our catching at him and smothering him, and
dragging him out of the bunk in a blanket, had given a horrid semblance
of life to the poor remains. The half-closed eyes seemed to plead for
repose, and, in the dance of the lamplight, the pale lips stirred, and,
by stirring, entreated.
“Now for a neat shob,” said Bol.
I went out sick, and was some time on deck ere I rallied. By and by Bol
and his mate came up, and the boatswain said:
“She vhas all right now. How many men vhas dis dot I make up for der
last heaf?”
“I don’t know,” said I.
“Veil, only dwenty-dwo. I steech opp half a leedle ship’s company mit
cholera. Dere vhas fifteen all toldt. Sefen diedt. I steech ’em opp. I
tell you, Mr. Fielding, vhen dot shob vhas ofer I feels like drinkin’.”
“Vhas he to be all night below?” said Galen.
“Yaw,” said I.
“Aboot der vatches, Mr. Fielding?” exclaimed Bol.
“Let that matter stand till we bury the captain.”
“Ay, ay, sir. Galen is der man, I belief.”
“She vhas villing,” said Galen.
I left the deck for a few minutes to view the body of my poor friend in
his sea-shroud. Miss Aurora sat at the table. She drummed with her
brilliant fingers, and her head rested on her left hand. Her face was
unusually pale; her eyes large, alarmed, and fiery, and blacker, owing
to her pallor, than they commonly showed.
“What is it?” said I, conceiving that something was wrong with her.
“Ave Maria, hark!” cried she.
I heard Galloon whining and complaining. Never did a more melancholy,
depressing, heart-subduing noise thread the conflicting uproar of a ship
in labor. I at once let Galloon into the captain’s cabin, and paused a
minute to view the shrouded figure upon which the dog had sprung; and I
remember thinking to myself: “Great is the difference between the dead
at sea and the dead ashore. At sea the dead man cannot be tyrannous; but
ashore, how does he serve his relatives and the world which he leaves
behind? A dismal funeral bell is rung for him, and the spirits of a
whole district are dejected--the spirits of a wide district that may
never have his name, or that, very well knowing his name, values not his
loss at the paring of a finger nail, are sunk because of that dreadful
knell. He obliges his survivors to draw down the blinds of the house in
which he expires, and, for the inside of a week, they sit in gloom, a
sort of pariahs, coming and going with fugitive swiftness, miserable
all, until it is _convenient_ to him to be buried. He defrauds his next
of kin of good money by the obligation of a solemn and expensive
funeral. He tyrannically robs his relatives by obliging them to put up a
memorial to him. But at sea? A piece of canvas and a twenty-four pound
shot; a little hole in the water, which is gone ere the eye can behold
it! The dead cannot be tyrannous at sea.”
“Señor Fielding,” said my lady Aurora, rising and holding my arm as I
was about to pass, “I cannot rest down here with the dead.”
She did not thus speak, but this was my interpretation of her words and
signs. I regarded her and considered. Where could she lie, if not in the
cabin? This, for her, was a miserable, horrible time; in as wild a
passage of shipwreck and adventure as ever woman lived through, and my
heart pitied her. It mattered not when the captain should be buried;
and, meeting her eyes again, and beholding the superstition and fear in
them, I looked up at the clock, that showed the hour to be a little
after ten, and, holding up my hands and afterward two fingers, I said,
“_Doce de la noche_--twelve of the night;” and, pointing and signing,
gave her to know that at midnight we would bury the captain.
She looked at me gratefully.
“I must go,” said I.
“Stop--oh, stop a minute!” she exclaimed in English, and went to her
berth, looking fearfully toward the door of the captain’s cabin as she
made her way, clinging and moving slowly, for very fierce and sharp at
times was the jump of the deck.
Strange, thought I, that the flight of a soul should make a terror of
the shell it quits! It would be the same with that fine-eyed woman, with
her aves and crossings. She dies; and the caballero on his knees at her
feet, the gallant cavalier who has courage enough for the holding of her
sweetness and her perfections to his heart while her charms live,
springs to his legs, fetches a wide compass to avoid the corpse, and
sooner than sleep a night beside the body would go to a lunatic asylum
for the rest of his days.
She came out of her berth clothed for the deck, wrapped up in her own
comfortable slop-chest manufactures, but half an hour of the cold and
blackness above sufficed; she went below again and sat under the clock
waiting for midnight. I chose twelve because all hands would be astir at
that hour. At twelve the starboard watch went below; Yan Bol would come
aft, and then we’d bury the dead. Meanwhile I ordered a couple of the
seamen in my watch to load the four nine-pounder carronades, that we
might dispatch Greaves with a sailor’s honors to his bed of ooze.
Lanterns were lighted and hung in the gangway in readiness.
In those times the burial at sea, in such craft as the _Black Watch_,
was a simple affair. Whether it was the captain at the top or the cabin
boy at the bottom, it mattered not; it was just a plain, respectful
launch over the rail, no prayers, a sail at the mast, and there was an
end. We had no book containing the burial service aboard. Few
merchantmen went to sea with such things. I thought over a prayer or two
as I walked the deck, meaning that the petition of a brother-sailor’s
heart should attend the launch of the canvassed figure; in which, and in
many other thoughts the time slipped by; the lady Aurora all the while
sitting below under the clock, waiting for midnight, often lifting her
black alarmed eyes to the skylight, and often looking around her with a
slow motion of her head, and at long intervals crossing herself. This
picture of her the frame of the skylight gave me. The glass was bright
and the light of the lamp strong.
Eight bells were struck, and presently the shapeless bulk of Bol came
through the lantern-light upon the main-deck. It was the blackest hour
of a black night. Even the foam, lifting and sinking alongside in
sheets, scarcely showed. We had made a fair wind with a shift of helm at
eight in the evening, and were bruising and rolling through it at about
nine knots, with a broad, dim, spectral glare under the stern.
“Is that you, Bol?”
“He vhas, Mr. Fielding.”
“I propose to bury my poor friend at once. The lady cannot rest, with
the body below. It will be a kindness to her, to all of us may be, and
no wrong to him. Nay, God forbid--if I believed it hurried--but a few
hours more or less can signify nothing.”
“Noting. Der crew vhas pleased too.”
“Well, get the body up--with all reverence, Bol; you know what to do.”
I called to Jimmy to smother Galloon as before and stow him out of the
road of the men till the body was on deck, and then I stationed Joseph
Street and Isaac Travers at the carronades, to discharge them when the
body left the plank. In ten minutes they brought him up; four carried
him, and one was Bol. The señorita came on deck, and holding by my arm
to steady herself, spoke to me. I said “yonder,” and she went into the
light cast by the lanterns on the lee side of the deck, and stood with
her hand upon a rope.
They carried the body to the gangway where the lanterns were, and I
went with them and they put one end of the plank on the top of the rail
and two of them held the other end, ready to tilt it. I think all the
seamen had drawn together to view this midnight burial. Antonio and
Jorge were close to a lantern. They sometimes crossed themselves, and
their eyes gleamed and restlessly rolled. They seemed heartily
frightened. The others stood stolid and staring, some in shadow, some
touched by the lantern beams. All hands bared their heads when the
corpse came to the gangway.
Had this funeral happened in daylight I should have ordered the topsail
to be backed. I agree with those who hold that the ship’s way should be
stopped when the body is launched. It would have been, however, but the
idlest of ceremonies to back the topsail in this deep midnight hour.
There was besides a large sea running, the fresh wind was off the
quarter, and the brig would have needed a shift of the helm to have got
an effectual stand out of her backed canvas.
Cold, oh how bitterly cold did that night grow on a sudden with the
presence of that body, pale on its plank in the lantern light! A wilder
cry sounded in the wind, a deeper dye entered the darkness. I prayed
aloud briefly, but not for the hearing of the men: the hiss of the
sweeping water alongside drowned my voice.
“Launch!” I cried.
As the canvas figure fled like a wreath of white smoke from the rail a
sunbright flash of fire threw out the whole brig: the roar of a gun
followed.
At that instant--at the instant of the explosion of the carronade--and
while the two fellows who had tilted the body paused for a moment or
two, grasping the end of the plank, a dark form seemed to spring from
the deck at my feet; it gained the plank in a bound, and went overboard.
“Der dok!” roared one of the Dutchmen.
The second gun was exploded with a deafening roar.
“Was that Galloon?” I shouted.
“It was, sir,” answered two or three voices.
“Hold your hand,” I bawled to the fellow at the third carronade.
I sprang on to the rail to look over. No sanity in _that_, for what was
there to see, what did I expect to see? We were going at nine knots an
hour: the spread of yeast on either hand of us was a wild and roaring
race that throbbed out of sight in the darkness abeam within a biscuit’s
toss, and that fled and vanished into the darkness abaft, within the
span of the brig’s main-deck.
“Are you sure it was the dog?” I cried from the rail.
“Yes, sir; yes, sir, it was the dog--it was Galloon,” was the answer.
“It was the dog,” cried Miss Aurora, coming close to me.
“Oh, poor Galloon!” I was struck to the heart. For some moments I stood
motionless, staring into the blackness, while the brig stormed onward,
rolling and foaming through the night. Was there nothing to be done?
Nothing, I vow to God. Perilous it might have been to bring the brig to
the wind in that hollow sea: but to save Galloon, who had saved my life,
I would have risked the brig, the treasure in her, nay, the lives within
her, so wild was I then. But the dog could not have been rescued without
lowering a boat, and a boat stood to be swung and smashed into staves
ere a soul entered her; and consider also the blackness of the Cape Horn
night that lay upon the ocean!
“Are these guns to be fired, sir?”
“No. Oh, lads, I would not have lost that dog for twenty-fold my share
of the money below. He saved my life--he’s still swimming out
there--he’s alive out there and may live. Where’s Jimmy?”
“Blubbering here, sir,” said a voice.
A couple of seamen ran him into the lantern light; I could have killed
him.
“Did not I tell you to stow Galloon away?”
“So I did, master.”
“Why is he perishing out yonder then, you villain?”
I turned my back and walked aft.