‘Yes,’ he exclaimed; ‘I shall be able to do it justice, I believe. I am a little uncertain in the matter of nautical terms; and when I’ve finished the account of it, I should be glad if you’d listen to it, Mr. Dugdale, and correct any trifling technical errors I may happen to make. Even now, I’ll be shot if I can tell the difference between starboard and larboard—never can remember, somehow. The words are so confoundedly alike, you know.’
‘If I were you,’ said I, ‘I should not suffer ignorance of the sea-life to hinder me from writing fully about it. Few sailors read; nobody else understands the calling. Say what you like, and you need only dash your absurdities into your canvas with a cocksure brush to be accepted as an authority.’
‘Still,’ he exclaimed, ‘in an account of a funeral at sea I should like to have the rigging right; nor in a description which,’ added he complacently, ‘is not likely to be wanting in some of the choicer qualities of poetry, would it be desirable, insignificant as the error might be in the eyes of landsmen, to mistake the mainmast for, let me say, the spanker boom.’
I assured him that I should be glad to hear his account when he had written it; and soon afterwards we left the table and went on deck.
The ship was this morning a very grand show of canvas. Her yards were braced just a little forward; the weather clew of the mainsail was up; all studdingsails to port were on her, and aloft she had something of the look of a line-of-battle ship with her immensely square yards rising to the truck, the great hoist of main topsail, with its four bands of reef-points, enormously thick shrouds and big tops, and all the heavens over the bow and far to port hidden by space upon space of cloth, effulgent in the sunshine, and flinging a light of their own upon the blue air in a sort of liquid gushing of radiance off their edges, trembling into an exquisite delicacy of outline like a thinness of ice against the sky. At the peak flew the red ensign half-mast high, languidly floating in rich brand-new folds of sunny crimson to the quiet breathing of the wind over the quarter. It was a hint of what was to come, and you noticed the influence of it upon the passengers, who talked in subdued voices, and walked thoughtfully, as though it were the Sabbath and Divine service was shortly to be held. There was nothing in sight the wide and gleaming circle round, saving the shoulders of a group of huge cream-coloured clouds down in the west, looking like the mountainous loom of a snow-whitened country.
Shortly before ten o’clock, Smallridge, taking his stand upon the forecastle head, applied his silver whistle to his lips, and sent the shrill metallic summons ringing throughout the length of the ship, following it with a deep-chested hurricane roar of ‘All hands ’tend funeral.’ The Jacks had been off work since breakfast time, and to the boatswain’s melodious invitation they came tumbling out of the forecastle all in the spruce warm-weather attire of those days—flowing white trousers, coloured shirts, round jackets, collars lying open to half way down their breasts, half a fathom of silk handkerchief worked up into the sailor’s knot, and, for the most part, round hats of straw, shaped like a tall hat of to-day, but the crown considerably lower. They came soberly rolling along in bunches of three and four, and massed themselves forward of the gangway and round about the hatchway, and the huge pillar of mast shooting up abaft it. In the foreground stood Smallridge, with three rows of cloth buttons to his jacket, his storm-beaten face luminous with recent rinsing, and his cheeks framed by a pair of upright collars such as the negro minstrel of our time loves to embellish his blackened countenance with. Next him was the sailmaker, his small blood-stained eyes restlessly rolling themselves aft upon the people on the poop from either side his high Roman nose. By his side was the cook, a fat, bilious-looking man; and close to him the carpenter, a withered old Scotchman, with a face of leather, puckered into a thousand wrinkles by time, weather, and trials of temper.
The first, third, and fourth mates took their place a little abaft the gangway, leaving the second officer on the poop to look after the ship. A young reefer clad in bright buttons stood at the bell, which he struck in funereal time, constantly glancing around him to find some one to exchange a grin with. When all were assembled the skipper stalked solemnly out of the cuddy, Prayer-book in hand. He was dressed as the officers were, in a long blue coat with black velvet lapels, cuffs, and collar, and white jean pantaloons. The only feature that distinguished his costume from that of the mates was the undecorated coat-cuffs; whereas the chief-mate had one button on his wrist, the third-mate three, and the fourth-mate four. Keeling was a man of strong piety, and his manner of addressing himself to this solemn business was full of an old-fashioned awe and reverence, which one might look a long way round among modern sea captains to find the like of, in such a performance, at all events, as that of burying the remains of a forecastle hand. Most of the passengers were grouped along the break of the poop to witness the ceremony. I see that large and stirring picture very freshly even now: the mass of whiskered faces, one showing past another, nearly every jaw moving to the gnawing of a quid; Keeling and his officers in full fig; the many-coloured dresses of the ladies fluttering along the line of the poop rail; I recall the deep hush that settled down upon the fine ship, no sound to break it but the tolling of the bell and a noise of water lazily washing alongside. High above us the great squares of canvas rose in brilliant clouds, one swelling to another with a soft swaying of the whole majestic fabric, as though the vessel were something sentient, and was keeping time with her mastheads to the mournful chimes on the quarter-deck.
The bell ceased; the midshipman struck ten o’clock upon it; the Jacks on the quarter-deck made a lane, and down it from forward came four hearty seamen, bearing upon their shoulders a hatch grating, on which was the hammock containing the body, covered with England’s commercial ensign. One end of this grating was rested upon the lee rail; then the captain began to read the sea funeral service. Mr. Johnson, who stood near me, stared thirstily at the scene; and methought Mr. Emmett, who was perched on the rail to windward, rolled his eye over the mass of colour that softened and brightened as the movement of the ship shifted the shadows, as though some fancies of a startling canvas to be wrought out of the spectacle were stirring in his mind. The captain paused in his delivery; the ensign was whipped off, the grating tilted, and the white hammock flashed overboard. I was at the lee rail, and glanced down into the sea alongside as the hammock sped from the bulwark. But the ocean coffin, instead of sinking, went floating astern like a lifebuoy, bobbing bravely upon the summer tumble, and lifting and sinking upon the swell as duck-like as a waterborne lifeboat.
I believe no man saw this but myself, everybody listening reverentially to the closing words of the skipper’s recital from the Prayer-book. I walked hastily aft to observe the hammock as it veered into our wake, and beckoned to Mr. Cocker, who at once crossed the deck.
‘See there!’ cried I, pointing to the thing that was frisking in the eddies upturned by our keel, and crawling into the distance to the slow progress of the ship. ‘Friend Crabb seems in no hurry to knock at Davy Jones’s door.’