I had a sacred duty to perform, and now that the daylight was come it was proper I should go to work.
On entering the forecastle I looked around me on the empty hammocks swinging from the deck, and finding one that looked new and clean, took it down and threw the mattress and blankets out of it and folded it up as a piece of canvas.
I then searched the carpenter's berth for a sail needle, twine, and palm, which things, together with the hammock, I took aft.
On reaching the cuddy I called Cornish, whose services in this matter I preferred to the steward's, and bid him follow me into the cabin where the old man's body lay.
When there, I closed the door and informed him that we should bury the poor old gentleman when the morning was more advanced, and that I wished him to help me to sew up the body in the hammock.
God knows I had rather that any man should have undertaken this job than I; but it was a duty I was bound to perform, and I desired, for Miss Robertson's sake, that it should be carried out with all the reverence and tenderness that so rude and simple a burial was susceptible of, and nothing done to cause the least violence to her feelings.
We spread the hammock open on the deck, and lifted the body and placed it on the hammock, and rolled a blanket over it. A very great change had come over the face of the corpse since death, and I do not think I should have known it as the kindly, dignified countenance, reverent with its white hair and beard, that had smiled at me from the bunk and thanked me for what I had done.
For what I had done!—alas! how mocking was this memory now!—with what painful cynicism did that lonely face illustrate the power of man over the great issues of life and death!
I brought the sides of the hammock to meet over the corpse and held them while Cornish passed the stitches. I then sent him to find me a big holystone or any pieces of iron, so as to sink the body, and he brought some pieces of the stone, which I secured in the clues at the foot of the hammock.
We left the face exposed and raised the body on to the bunk and covered it over; after which I despatched Cornish for a carpenter's short-stage I had noticed forward, and which was in use for slinging the men over the ship's side for scraping or painting her. A grating would have answered our purpose better, but the hatches were battened down, the tarpaulins over them, and there was no grating to be got at without leaving the hatchway exposed.