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Under the flag I could make out faintly the lines of a human figure, and I knew that one of the sloop's officers most likely her commander, from the respect shown to him by covering him with the colors must be lying there, just as his men had placed him to wait for a sea-burial until the fighting should come to an end.
"That night," he was saying, "four on us went an' cut Sol Brig down from where they'd hanged him. We got away, down to the sloop an' out to sea with him. I didn't have no cause to love the old devil, but I'd ha' hated to have a ghost like his after me, so I lent a hand. We wrapped him up decent an' gave him sea-burial from his own deck, as he'd paced for thirty year.
The thought was a cheering one and as the sailor, having filled his pockets with doubloons and other coins, and given the dead men a sea-burial by consigning them to the deep, sculled slowly back to the Eleanor Jones, his mind was busy with plans of escape. Now it chanced that among the cargo carried by the barque was a small launch intended for the use of a plantation owner in South America.
The wheel and lookout had been relieved, but the mate did not summon his watch to labor, as was his custom; he kept to the poop, and we heard not a peep from him. The squareheads had taken a lamp from the lamp-locker and a sack of coal from the peak, and Lindquist had the body of Nils upon the forehatch preparing it for sea-burial. He stitched away in silence, his mates watched him in silence.
Yet, for the rite to be authentic, Lund must have presided, and the sea-burial service would have been a mockery under the circumstances.
They were about to resort to sea-burial, when, through the interposition of the husband, who was anxious to take her home, the ship-carpenters started to construct a coffin suitable for a long voyage, a process which took several days, during which time she lay in her berth, swathed in robes and ready for interment.
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