But over the Turk, who seemed peacefully sleeping, Kep shed many tears, and he was the only one they sewed up in a hammock and ballasted so that it might sink speedily down to the bottom, beyond the reach of the blue sharks with which this region abounds.
Then the mate. Well, they had cast off the ropes, for though he jabbered, he was quiet. He had apparently lost all memory, and it was sad to see him smile as he wandered about the deck touching things and trying to speak.
But on the third day he died, and was at once thrown overboard.
Strange it is, reader, that though the saying "Murder will out" does not often come true on shore, at sea it is nearly always so, and murders and mutinies on the high seas have been discovered in the most miraculous ways.
Well Dolphin, or Adolphus, as we had best now call him, in order to get the odour of that ghastly ship out of our thoughts, had taken the bearings of the land near to which the tragedy had occurred, as well as--from the mate's own slate--its latitude and longitude.
After a time, the weather being clear and fine, Adolphus and Kep managed to set a jib and a bit of square canvas also, and glad enough they were to find that she obeyed her helm.
So they took trick and trick at the wheel, and all day long were for ever on the watch for a sail.
But they had somehow drifted far out of ocean highways, and it was weeks before they could possibly get near one again, for they were doing little more than three knots an hour.
In their spare time they did all they could to clean ship, but the terrible stench still hung around the after cabin or saloon, and so they concluded to bunk aft. This was more cheerful, and Kep found heart enough to play on his marvellous piccolo again.
He called himself Captain Vanderdecken, and so baptized the ship the Flying Dutchman.