HOW THEY BURY A MAN-OF-WAR’S-MAN AT SEA.
Quarters over in the morning, the boatswain and his four mates stood
round the main hatchway, and after giving the usual whistle, made the
customary announcement—“_All hands bury the dead, ahoy!_”
In a man-of-war, every thing, even to a man’s funeral and burial,
proceeds with the unrelenting promptitude of the martial code. And
whether it is _all hands bury the dead!_ or _all hands splice the
main-brace_, the order is given in the same hoarse tones.
Both officers and men assembled in the lee waist, and through that
bareheaded crowd the mess-mates of Shenly brought his body to the same
gangway where it had thrice winced under the scourge. But there is
something in death that ennobles even a pauper’s corpse; and the
Captain himself stood bareheaded before the remains of a man whom, with
his hat on, he had sentenced to the ignominious gratings when alive.
“_I am the resurrection and the life!_” solemnly began the Chaplain, in
full canonicals, the prayer-book in his hand.
“Damn you! off those booms!” roared a boatswain’s mate to a crowd of
top-men, who had elevated themselves to gain a better view of the
scene.
“_We commit this body to the deep!_” At the word, Shenly’s mess-mates
tilted the board, and the dead sailor sank in the sea.
“Look aloft,” whispered Jack Chase. “See that bird! it is the spirit of
Shenly.”
Gazing upward, all beheld a snow-white, solitary fowl, which—whence
coming no one could tell—had been hovering over the main-mast during
the service, and was now sailing far up into the depths of the sky.