The Mosquito Indian was sufficiently acquainted with the English tongue, though he did patter it but queerly. He told me the name he went by amongst the English, and was very proud of it, knowing no better. For ’twas but a ridiculous name, given him by some buffoon. So I called him Thalassios (afterwards shortened to Thalass), because it was a high-sounding word to please him, and because he had been taken up from the sea.
Soon after came two seamen to bear away the dead body of the Englishman. I followed them forth to where my brother stood awaiting them under the break of the poop. He immediately bade them to throw the body into the sea.
On this, however, the boatswain, who stood near, putting off his cap to the Captain, begged leave to ask whether he would not give the body a volley for ceremony, or, at any rate, cause it to be sewn up in a sheet or an old topsail, and a weight fastened to it to sink it in the sea. “For,” said he, “if you throw him in as he be, I doubt he’ll rise and haunt us, Cap’n.”
But the Captain, being in a very ill-temper, took this in dudgeon, and roughly bid the boatswain to keep his tongue quiet, and the mariners to act their part without more ado. This they did—albeit but unwillingly for what the boatswain had said about the spirit haunting the ship—and, as the body splashed into the sea, they looked one on another very glumly; and, after the Captain’s back was turned, they began to murmur against him, saying he had put a curse upon them, and that henceforward we should meet with no luck in our voyage, and that, in all likelihood, the ship would be quite lost.
Towards evening the wind freshened very much, so that they said evil already began to fall upon us. But, on this coming to my brother’s ears, he went and spoke to them, and appeased their minds; for he showed them that the wind was favourable to our course, and that it did but speed them the faster to the island whither they were bound and where they would all make their fortunes.
When dark came, we had a great rippling sea, and a high wind, which sometimes came in pushes, forcing us to hand our topsails often. It increased to a gale, and came so furious at last, that we scudded under a mainsail.
This gave the men work enough all night.
CHAPTER IX.
OUVERY DELIVERS UP THE CHART.
On the next day following, I got up betimes and went on deck.
The ship lurched and pitched so that I had much ado to keep my feet. We ran before the wind under our topsails only, driven ever onwards with the rolling long waves of the sea and the flying white scud-rack overhead. This all-moving prospect put strange thoughts and whimsies in my head, insomuch that I found I could not endure to look upon it for long together, and I presently returned into my cabin, and read in a book until breakfast-time.