XX
UNDER THE FLAG
A black, threatening sky, with heavy banks of indigo-tinted clouds massed about the sea-line. A sickly, greenish light high up in the zenith. Elsewhere the gloom of warring elements broken only by flashes of sheet lightning, vivid but noiseless. The sea, rolling up from the sou'-west in a long glassy swell, was ruffled here and there by the checks of a fitful breeze. It needed not a deadly low barometer to tell us of a coming storm; we saw it in the tiers of hard-edged fearsome clouds, breaking up and re-forming, bank upon bank, in endless figurations. Some opposing force was keeping the wind in check; there was conflict up there, for, though masses of detached cloud were breaking away and racing o'er the zenith, we held but a fitful gusty breeze, and our barque, under low sail, was lurching uneasily for want of a steadying wind.
It was a morning of ill-omen, and the darkling sky but reflected the gloom of our faces; our thoughts were in keeping with the day, for we had lost a shipmate, one among us was gone, Old Martin was dead.
He died sometime in the middle watch, no one knew when. He was awake when the watch came below at midnight, for Welsh John had given him matches for his pipe before turning in. That was the last, for when they were called at four, Martin was cold and quiet. There was no trouble on his face, no sign of pain or suffering. Belike the old man had put his pipe aside, and finding no shipmate awake to 'pass the word,' had gently claimed his Pilot.
There was no great show of grief when it was known. Perhaps a bit catch in the voice when speaking of it, an unusual gentleness in our manner towards one another, but no resemblance of mourning, no shadow of woe. His was no young life untimely ended, there was no accident to be discussed, no blame to be apportioned. It was just that old lamp had flickered out at last. Ours was a sense of loss, we had lost a shipmate. There would be another empty bunk in the fo'cas'le, a hand less at the halyards, a name passed over at muster; we would miss the voice of experience that carried so much weight in our affairs—an influence was gone.
At daybreak we stood around to have a last look at the strong old face we had known so long. The sailmaker was sewing him up in the clew of an old topsail, a sailorly shroud that Martin would have chosen. The office was done gently and soberly, as a shipmate has a right to expect. A few pieces of old chain were put in to weight him down, all ship-shape and sailor-fashion, and when it was done we laid him out on the main hatch with the Flag he had served cast over him.
"There goes a good sailorman," said one of the crowd; "'e knowed 'is work," said another.
"A good sailorman—'e knowed 'is work!" That was Martin's epitaph—more, he would not want.
His was no long illness. A chill had settled into bronchitis. Martin had ever a fine disregard for weatherly precautions; he had to live up to the name of a 'hard case.' Fits of coughing and a high temperature came on him, and he was ordered below. At first he was taken aft to a spare room, but the unaccustomed luxury of the cabin so told on him that when he begged to be put in the fo'cas'le again, the Old Man let him go. There he seemed to get better. He had his shipmates to talk to; he was even in a position to rebuke the voice of youth and inexperience when occasion required, though with but a shadow of his former vehemence. Though he knew it would hurt him, he would smoke his pipe; it seemed to afford him a measure of relief. The Old Man did what he could for him, and spent more time in the fo'cas'le than most masters would have done. Not much could be done, for a ship is ill-fitted for an ailing man. At times there were relapses; times when his breathing would become laboured. Sometimes he became delirious and raved of old ships, and storms, and sails, then he would recover, and even seemed to get better. Then came the end. The tough old frame could no longer stand the strain, and he passed off quietly in the silence of middle night.