“Hush your noise!” interrupted the Head Captain angrily.
The Vicar could not wait for any one else’s initiative, but began feverishly pulling up handfuls of hay and piling them lightly over the dead pirate’s boots. The Head Captain covered the man’s body with two hastily snatched armfuls, and as the Vicar’s courage gave out at this point, coolly laid a thin wisp directly over the red face. The pirate was buried. It gave one a thrill to see hardly a dim outline of his figure.
“Hats off, my men,” whispered the Head Captain, hoarse with emotion, “and we will say a prayer. Lieutenant,” with a noble renunciation in his expression, “you may say the prayer!”
The Lieutenant was touched, and melted from his sulky scorn.
“What’ll I say? What’ll I say?” he muttered excitedly. “Not ‘Hollow be thy Name’? That’s a long one.”
“Now I lay——” suggested the Vicar tremulously.
“Pshaw, no!” interrupted the Head Captain.
“Not a baby thing like that! If you don’t know one, Lieutenant, I’ll make one up.”
“No, I’ll say one,” urged the Lieutenant hastily. “I’ll say one, Captain. I’ll say my colick that I had yesterday. Wait up a second, till I remember it.”
The heavy, regular breathing continued to come out from under the hay, where lay the martyred pirate. The hens in a near-by henyard cackled shrilly, the trilling of an indefatigable canary in the coachman’s rooms rose and fell through the hot June air. Red and dripping with the heat, dusty and sprinkled with the hay, the outlaws stood, solemn and tense, starting at the least fancied sound from below.