156 TEE CRUISE OF THE " CACEALOTy 



in the waist, the ship's bell was tolled, and the ensign 

 run up halfway. 



The captain was still too ill to be moved, so the 

 mate stepped forward with a rusty old Common Prayer- 

 book in his hands, whereon my vagrant fancy imme- 

 diately fastened in frantic endeavour to imagine how 

 it came to be there. The silence of death was over all. 

 True, the man was but a unit of no special note among 

 us, but death had conferred upon him a brevet rank, in 

 virtue of which he dominated every thought. It seemed 

 strange to me that we who faced death so often and 

 variously, until natural fear had become deadened by 

 custom, should, now that one of our number lay a 

 rapidly-corrupting husk before us, be so tremendously 

 impressed by the simple, inevitable fact. I suppose it 

 was because none of us were able to realize the imma- 

 nence of Death until we saw his handiwork. Mr. Count 

 opened the book, fumbling nervously among the un- 

 familiar leaves. Then he suddenly looked up, his 

 weather-scarred face glowing a dull brick-red, and said, 

 in a low voice, " This thing's too many fer me ; kin any 

 of ye do it ? Ef not, I guess we'll hev ter take it as 

 read." There was no response for a moment ; then I 

 stepped forward, reaching out my hand for the book. Its 

 contents were familiar enough to me, for in happy pre- 

 arab days I had been a chorister in the old Lock Chapel, 

 Harrow Eoad, and had borne my part in the service so 

 often that I think even now I could repeat the greater 

 part of it memoriter. Mr. Count gave it me without 

 a word, and, trembling like a leaf, I turned to the 

 "Burial Service," and began the majestic sentences, "I 

 am the Eesurrection and the Life, saith the Lord." I 

 did not know my own voice as the wonderful worda 



