“Turn him over, Tom,” said I, softly, and the sailor clambered into the canoe and obeyed—rather gingerly, though, for no one likes to touch a dead man.
The bearded face and staring eyes that confronted us were those of one of our own race, a white man who had been shot through the heart with an arrow that still projected from the wound. His clothing was threadbare and hung almost in rags, while his feet were protected by rude sandals of bark laced with thongs of some vegetable fibre. He was neither a Mexican nor a Spaniard, but I judged him a North American of German descent, if his physiognomy could be trusted.
The arrow must have killed him instantly.
The man had not long been dead, that was quite evident, and the arrow that had pierced his heart must have killed him instantly. I pulled out the weapon and found it of skillful construction,—a head of hammered bronze fastened to a shaft most delicately shaped and of a wood that resembled yew. It differed materially from any Indian arrow I had ever before seen.
The mystery of this man’s life and death seemed impenetrable, and I ordered the canoe attached to our stern and towed it in our wake down to the ship.
A sailor’s burial ground is the sea; so I decided to sew the corpse in sacking, weight it heavily, and sink it in the deepest water of the river.
Before doing this one of the men searched the pockets of the tattered clothing and drew out a small book that looked like a diary, a pocket-knife, several bits of lead-pencil and a roll of thin bark tied with wisps of the same material.
These things I took charge of, and then watched the obsequies. These were quickly performed, Ned reading a short prayer from his Bible by way of ceremony while all our company stood with bared heads. Then the men rowed the body out to the deepest part of the river, and as I watched them from the deck I noticed they were thrown into a state of sudden excitement and heard cries of anger and alarm. Lifting my glass into position I discovered the cause of this. The boat was surrounded by sharks, their dark heads and white bellies alternating as they slowly swam round and round, attracted by the scent of prey. I yelled to the men to bring the body back, but they were too excited to hear me and the next instant had dumped the weighted sack overboard and begun to row back to the wreck at racing speed.