"HIS LAST MUSTER!"
On that, the noble fellow, who thus unselfishly sacrificed his life for
mine, fell with a whiz through the air that seemed to send the wind up
into my face, down to the deck below.
Cannoning against the rigging on the port side, he was caught up in the
belly of the mizzen-top sail, which slightly stopped the impetus of his
descent, but, the concussion broke his spine, and when I, pale,
trembling, and almost as lifeless as he, coming down from aloft, I
hardly know how, reached his side, the doctor, who was bending over him
and applying stimulants, said he had only a few moments longer to live.
The chaplain, too, was there, having been hastily summoned from his
duties of instructing the young middies in the wardroom; as also was the
commodore, with a graver face on him than I had ever seen before.
I don't know whether he heard my step, or the cry I ejaculated when the
doctor spoke of his approaching end.
Whatever it was, something made my dying shipmate open his eyes just
then, his glance wandering round the circle of those near.
"What is it, my poor lad?" asked the chaplain kindly, stooping down, so
as to hear better any request he might make. "Is there anything you
would like done or said for you?"
He was thinking, good man, no doubt, of offering up a prayer.
But the mind of Moses Reeks--to call him by his right name, and drop the
somewhat opprobrious sobriquet by which I have hitherto styled the poor
fellow, and by which, indeed, he was always known on board--was still
bent on things terrestrial; though, possibly, his motive might have been
as high and had as divine a source as anything the chaplain might have
intended to say!
His eyes lighted on me and their wandering ceased.
"Coom here, lad," he whispered very faintly, so very faintly that his
lips seemed to give out no sound at all. "Coom here!"
I heard, though, and went to his side, listening earnestly, for I could
not speak.
He did not notice this, however, making up, with his slowly ebbing
senses, what he wished himself to say.
"To-am Bowlin'," he faltered out in lisping accents with his failing
breath, "ye've done Oi a toorn wanst, lad, an' I wer an oongrateful cur
to 'ee, thet Oi wer, ez Oi didn't warnt fur to be a-beholden to yer; but
you a' me, To-am, be naow quits, lad!"
As he thus spoke, a smile irradiated his rough-hewn features, making
them look positively beautiful; and, with the last word he uttered, his
spirit fled, with a sigh that was stifled in its birth.
The commodore uncovered his head in the presence of Death--the superior
officer of even one flying the broad pennant and the personal
representative of her Majesty wherever the broad red cross of Saint
George, borne on that oblong flag, may float.