He was an old man, none knew how old. The kindly clerks in the shipping office had copied from one discharge note to the other when 'signing him on,' and he stood at fifty-eight on our articles; at sixty, he would never have got a 'sight.' He talked of old ships long since vanished from the face of the waters; if he had served on these he must have been over seventy years. Sometimes, but only to favoured shipmates, he would tell of his service aboard a Yankee cruiser when Fort Sumter fell, but he took greater pride in having been bo'sun of the famous Sovereign of the Seas.
"Three hundred an' seventy miles," he would say; "that wos 'er day's travellin'! That's wot Ah calls sailin' a ship. None o' yer damn 'clew up an' clew down,' but give 'er th' ruddy canvas an'—let 'er go, boys!"
He was of the old type, bred in a hard sea-school. One of his boasts was that he had sailed for five years in packet ships, 'an' never saw th' pay table.' He would 'sign on' at Liverpool, giving his boarding-master a month's advance note for quittance. At New York he would desert, and after a bout ashore would sail for Liverpool in a new ship. There was a reason for this seeming foolish way of doing.
"None o' yer slavin' at harbour jobs an' cargo work; not fer me, me sons! Ah wos a sailorman an' did only sailorin' jobs. Them wos th' days w'en sailormen wos men, an' no ruddy cargo-wrastlin', coal-diggin' scallywags, wot they be now!"
A great upholder of the rights of the fo'cas'le, he looked on the Mates as his natural enemies, and though he did his work, and did it well, he never let pass an opportunity of trying a Mate's temper by outspoken criticism of the Officers' way of handling ship or sail. Apprentices he bore with, though he was always suspicious of a cabin influence.
That was Martin, our gallantly truculent, overbearing Old Martin; and, as we looked on the motionless figure outlined by folds of the Flag, we thought with regret of the time we took a pleasure in rousing him to a burst of sailorly invective. Whistling about the decks, or flying past him in the rigging with a great shaking of the shrouds when the 'crowd' was laying aloft to hand sail. "Come on, old 'has-been'!" Jones once shouted to him as he clambered over the futtock shrouds. Martin was furious.
"Has-been," he shouted in reply. "Aye, mebbe a 'has-been,' but w'en ye comes to my time o' life, young cock, ye can call yerself a 'never-bloody-wos'!"
Well! His watch was up, and when the black, ragged clouds broke away from the sou'-west and roused the sea against us, we would be one less to face it, and he would have rest till the great call of 'all hands'; rest below the heaving water that had borne him so long.
Surely there is nothing more solemn than a burial at sea. Ashore there are familiar landmarks, the nearness of the haunts of men, the neighbourly headstones, the great company of the dead, to take from the loneliness of the grave. Here was nothing but a heaving ship on the immensity of mid-ocean, an open gangway, a figure shrouded in folds of a Flag, and a small knot of bare-headed men, bent and swaying to meet the lurches of the vessel, grouped about the simple bier. The wind had increased and there was an ominous harping among the backstays. The ship was heaving unsteadily, and it was with difficulty we could keep a balance on the wet, sloping deck. Overhead the sky was black with the wrack of hurrying clouds, and the sullen grey water around us was already white-topped by the bite of freshening wind.