The gun was still lying where it fell—the muzzle resting on the dead man’s shoulder, and the butt on the sand beside his right knee. The position was so consistent with the idea of suicide, that they at once adopted it.
“Well, it’s no good moving him till daylight,” said the captain. “Some of you get a bit of sailcloth to cover him with, and let’s leave him as he is until the morning. Now, my lads, turn in and get what sleep you can, for we must be away at sun-up;” and he led the way back to the camp, followed by most of the men. Allen went with them and lay down, pretending to sleep rather than undergo the questions he thought might follow.
They were all astir before daybreak. The captain called Allen, as being Benion’s fellow-passenger, and asked him whether he knew of anything that would account for the suicide.
“He had a box,” replied Allen, “in which he kept all our money. It was lost in the schooner, and when he found that it was gone he lost his head, as you saw.”
“Where were you when the thing happened?”
“I had left the camp on the other side. When I heard the gun go off I ran in and found you round the body. When I left, Benion was sitting here on the beach as he had been all day.”
“H’m! You must have been a long time away,” said the captain, turning to give orders about stowing the stores in the boat. Then taking with him the mate and such of the sailors as were not employed, he walked to the dilo-tree followed by Allen. At its foot a sailcloth was spread, which had roughly taken the shape of the body it covered. In the grey light Allen could see that one end of it was stained red and caked hard. The captain saw it too, and said, “Don’t uncover the poor devil; dig the hole here, and we’ll lift him into it just as he is.”
Four sailors armed with bits of broken plank began to scrape up the sand so as to form a hollow trench, and as the mound at the back grew higher, the sand slipped down and met the pile Allen had made round the buried chest. In a few moments a shallow trench had been dug, and they lifted the stiff body still covered and lowered it gently into the rough grave.
“Hats off!” said the captain, gruffly, as he stepped to the side of the grave. “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes. We commit his body to the earth, in sure and certain hope that at the last day he will rise again.”
It was all that he could remember of the Burial Service, and he said it defiantly as a man who does his duty regardless of the ridicule he may provoke, and dropped a handful of the coral sand upon the canvas.