Kosmaroff did as he was told. His eyes had the unmistakable glitter of starvation and exhaustion. They were fixed on Cartoner's face, with a hundred unasked questions in them.
“How did it happen?” asked Cartoner, at length.
“They fired on us crossing the frontier, and hit him. Pity it was not me. He is a much greater loss than I should have been. That was the night before last. He died before the morning.”
“Tut! tut!” muttered Captain Cable, with an unwritable expression of pity. “There was the makings of a man in him,” he said—“the makings of a man!”
And what Captain Cable held worthy of the name of man is not so common as to be lost to the world with indifference. He stood reflecting for a moment while Kosmaroff ate the ship's biscuit offered to him in the lid of a box, and Cartoner stared thoughtfully at the flickering lamp.
“I'll take him out to sea and bury him there,” said Cable, at length, “if so be as that's agreeable to you. There's many a good man buried at sea, and when my time comes I'll ask for no better berth.”
“That is the only thing to be done,” said Cartoner.
Kosmaroff glanced towards the bed.
“Yes,” he said, “that will do. He will lay quiet enough there.”
And all three, perhaps, thought of all that they were to bury beneath the sea with this last of the Bukatys.