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Updated: June 5, 2025
We were the sole survivors of the Petite Jeanne. Captain Oudouse must have succumbed to exhaustion, for several days later his hatch-cover drifted ashore without him. Otoo and I lived with the natives of the atoll for a week, when we were rescued by a French cruiser and taken to Tahiti. In the meantime, however, we had performed the ceremony of exchanging names.
Several men picked up the hatch-cover with its ghastly freight, carried it to the lee side, and rested it on the boats, the feet pointing overboard. To the feet was attached the sack of coal which the cook had fetched. I had always conceived a burial at sea to be a very solemn and awe- inspiring event, but I was quickly disillusioned, by this burial at any rate.
Finally, the captain's son, irritated beyond measure, jerked the book from the palsied fingers of the old man and found the place. Again the quavering voice of the captain arose. Then came the cue: "And the body shall be cast into the sea." We elevated one end of the hatch-cover, and the Bricklayer plunged outboard and was gone.
This was a most comforting reflection, and I recollect springing out through the lazarette hatch with as spirited a caper as ever I had cut at any time in my life. I replaced the hatch-cover, and having resolved upon the aftmost of the four cabins as my bedroom, entered it to see what kind of accommodation it would yield me.
A few spears and swords stood in the rack about the mast. The athlete bolted the sliding hatch-cover, and tore down the weapons. “Release your wife,” he ordered Phormio; “yonder sea chest is strong. Drag it over to bar the hatch-ladder. Work as Titans if you hope for another sun.” “Ai, ai, ai!” screeched Lampaxo, who had released Lars’s fingers only to resume her din, “we all perish.
The coons were fighting and squealing around my boat, which lay snugly ensconced in a bayou among the reeds, for, once under my hatch-cover, the presence of man was unheeded by these animals, and they sportively turned my deck into a species of amphitheatre.
We sewed him up in the blankets in which he died and laid him on a hatch-cover for'ard of the main-hatch on the port side. A gunnysack, half full of galley coal, was fastened to his feet. It was bitter cold. The weather-side of every rope, spar, and stay was coated with ice, while all the rigging was a harp, singing and shouting under the fierce hand of the wind.
From time to time they stole glances at Wolf Larsen, and I could see that they were apprehensive of the man. He stepped up to the hatch-cover, and all caps came off. I ran my eyes over them twenty men all told; twenty-two including the man at the wheel and myself.
"Stay behind, and brace yourself against the hatch-cover. I'll get underneath and lift. Once on the rail the two of us must shove it free overboard. Here, keep a grip on this line, so the raft can't float away."
Long after the last hatch-cover had been placed the boatswain continued to inspect, going over the deck from bow to stern to see that every movable thing was lashed fast. In the engine-room as well, extra precautions were taken. It was Robert Neville's watch below; he was the first of the three assistant engineers.
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