‘No; that ceremony is to take place in the morning, I believe.’
‘Our ship, then, will sail all night long with a dead body on board?’ she exclaimed with a lift of her eyes to the stars and then a look seawards. ‘Are not the superstitions of sailors opposed to such burdens?’
‘Jack does not love dead bodies,’ said I, making as if to resume my leaning posture at the rail, as one interrupted in a reverie; for harmless as her questions were, I did not at all relish her haughty commanding manner of putting them; besides, this was the first time I had exchanged a sentence with her since that night of the collision in the Channel; and the unconquerable delight I took in gazing at her beauty, that now, to my ardent young eyes, was idealised by the starlit dusk by which I surveyed her into graces beyond expression fascinating, affected me also as a sort of injury to my own dignity, thanks to the mood that had grown up in me through what I had said and thought of her. ‘But,’ continued I carelessly, ‘what is regarded as a superstition by the sailor is a stroke of nature common to us all. One may travel far without meeting any person who will choose a dead body for company.’
She walked to the rail a few feet away from where I stood, and looked at the water for some while in silence, as though she had not heard me.
‘I would rather die anywhere than at sea,’ she exclaimed, as though thinking aloud, with a sudden crossing of her hands upon her breast, as if a chill had entered her from the dark ocean. ‘The horror of being buried in that void there would keep me alive. Oh, if it be true, as Shakespeare says, that dreams may visit us in our graves—in our graves ashore, where there are daisies and green turf and the twinkling shadows of leaves, and often the full moon and the high summer night shedding a peace like that of God himself, passing all understanding, upon the dead—what should be the visions that enter into the sleep of one floating deep down in that great mystery there?’
This was a passage of humour which I was quite young enough to have coaxed, and have sought to improve in any other fine young woman after her pattern; but my temper just then happened to be perverse and my mood obnoxious to sentiment.
‘Why,’ said I, pretending to stare at the water, ‘what’s the difference between being lowered in a coffin and being hove overboard in a canvas sack with a lump of holystone at one’s feet, when one doesn’t know it? If one could believe in the mermaid, in coral pavilions illuminated with cressets brilliant with sea-fire, in those sweet songs which were formerly sung by fishy virgins, who swept their lyres of gold with arms of ivory and fingers of pearl, I believe that when my time came I should be very willing to take the plunge, in fact choose it in preference to——’
I brought my eyes away from the water, and saw her figure in the companion-way down which she floated!
A minute later, Colonel Bannister came along. He approached me close, staring hard, and said: ‘Oh, it’s you, Dugdale! I thought it was the second-mate. Here’s a pretty go! There’s a man dead.’
‘He couldn’t help it, colonel,’ said I.