He did not notice this, however, making up, with his slowly ebbing senses, what he wished himself to say.
“To-am Bowlin’,” he faltered out in lisping accents with his failing breath, “ye’ve done Oi a toorn wanst, lad, an’ I wer an oongrateful cur to ’ee, thet Oi wer, ez Oi didn’t warnt fur to be a-beholden to yer; but you a’ me, To-am, be naow quits, lad!”
As he thus spoke, a smile irradiated his rough-hewn features, making them look positively beautiful; and, with the last word he uttered, his spirit fled, with a sigh that was stifled in its birth.
The commodore uncovered his head in the presence of Death—the superior officer of even one flying the broad pennant and the personal representative of her Majesty wherever the broad red cross of Saint George, borne on that oblong flag, may float.
At that moment the ship’s bugler forwards sounded the ‘assembly.’
“Peace to his spirit, poor boy,” said our chief solemnly. “He’s gone to his last muster!”
It was Two Bells in the first dog-watch before the Ruby closed with us sufficiently to speak with us; when she reported that she had parted with the other ships of the squadron even before she had lost sight of us at the commencement of the gale, not seeing anything of them since.
Her commander also informed the commodore that they had lost two men overboard while reefing topsails in a squall, the sea running so high that it was impossible to lower a boat to save them.
We, in our turn, told of poor ‘Ugly’s’ heroic end: and, as it was approaching sunset, his body was sewn up in his hammock, with a shot fastened to the feet, and committed to the deep.
All hands were present while the chaplain read the funeral service on the quarter-deck: and, as the grating on which the poor fellow’s remains rested, covered for the moment with the Union Jack, was canted through the port and its lifeless burden went below with a splash, to its last resting-place until the sea shall give up its dead, the waning sun dipped below the horizon.