"The only way now," I answered.
We lifted the poor fellows and laid them gently in the bows side by side, and then pulled for the open water.
The dinghy's painter was lying in the bottom of the boat, and as I rowed the Skipper untwisted and split the rope. Of course, I had known quite well why he lifted two heavy rocks from the beach and laid them under the thwarts. When I had rowed for about ten minutes, the Skipper said, "Way enough!" I trailed my oars, and together we prepared the men for the last sad rites. With one end of a rope around the body of each, and the other fastened securely around one of the rocks, we lowered them one after another into that deep over which for so many years they had sailed happy-go-lucky fellows. As they sank below the surface, the Skipper shifted his squatting position into a kneeling one, raised his eyes to the blue above him, clasped his weather-beaten hands, and said:
"Oh, Thou who holdest the oceans of the earth in the hollow of Thy hands, hold these poor sailors, we pray Thee, within Thy tender keeping, and when the sea gives up its dead, good Lord, and they are called aft to Thy mast, where they must answer up, no shirking, remember the many trials and temptations of poor Jack, dear Father, and judge them as sailors, and not as human beings!"
"Amen!" said I.
CHAPTER V.
A MYSTERIOUS FLIGHT.
I could not restrain a smile, even at this most solemn moment, as I heard the Skipper's ending. I sat looking at the water for a little—at the resting place of the men, which was marked for a short time by the bubbles which came to the surface; and then a light wind ruffled the water, and I closed my eyes, breathing a few words for the living as well as for the dead. When I opened them again, I had lost trace of those nameless graves for all time.