“Huh,” objected Puggles, between whom and Spottie there had grown up a sharp rivalry during their brief acquaintance, “why they no steal dead sahib? I axes.” Then to his master: “Lascar maybe done come back, sahib.”
This suggestion certainly smacked more of plausibility than that offered by Spottie, since it not only accounted for the disappearance of the cord and knife, but of Bosin as well. Was it too much to believe that the faithful creature's hatred, instinctively awakened by the lascar's stealthy return, had outweighed affection for his dead master and impelled him to abandon the one that he might track the other? Remembering the intelligence exhibited by the monkey in the past, Don at least was satisfied that this explanation was the true one.
By midnight all was in readiness, and with heavy hearts they took up their dead and began the toilsome descent to the creek. This reached, the Jolly Tar was drawn from her place of concealment, and the captain's body lashed in a tarpaulin. Then, with white wings spread, the cutter bore silently away from the creek's mouth in quest of a last resting-place for the master whose behest she was never again to obey.
“This will do,” said Don, when a half-hour's run had put them well off-shore. “Take the tiller, Pug, and keep her head to the wind for a little.”
With bowed head he opened the well-worn Prayer Book, and, while the waves chanted a solemn funeral dirge, read in hushed tones the office for the burial of the dead at sea. A pause, a tear glinting in the moonlight, a splash—and just as the morning star flashed out like a beacon above the eastern sea-rim, the old sailor began the Eternal Voyage.
“And now,” said Don, as he brought the cutters head round in the direction of the creek; “now for the last tussle and justice for the dead. Let me only come face to face once more with that murderous lascar or his master, and no false notions of mercy shall stay my hand—so help me Heaven!”
And surely not Heaven itself could deem that vow unrighteous.