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"There are the rocks, sir," the top-man said, after they had been some twenty minutes in their position, "over the lee bow, about two points off our course." "I see them now," Edgar said. "I thought we should have made them out by the white foam round them, but it is white everywhere."
They lose the number of their mess, and their mess-mates sticks the spoons in the rack; but no good no good, old Ringrope; they ar'n't dead yet. I tell ye, now, ten best bower-anchors wouldn't sink this 'ere top-man. He'll be soon coming in the wake of the thirty-nine spooks what spooks me every night in my hammock jist afore the mid-watch is called.
"You are a man of singular intelligence," cried Ludlow, again facing the intruder; "as well as one of singular " "Effrontery," rejoined the other, observing that the commander hesitated. Let the commissioned officer of the Queen speak boldly; I am no better than a top-man, or at most a quarter-master."
Being more interested in the active proceedings of Surgeon Sawyer, who was now threading a needle to sew up the overlapping of the stump, the young gentlemen had not scrupled to turn away their attention altogether from the lecturer. A few moments more, and the top-man, in a swoon, was removed below into the sick-bay.
"I hope I know my duty, your Honor, which is to obey orders, though it may break owners," returned the top-man.
Now, it appeared, that at the moment the sentry fired, the top-man in order to elude discovery, by manifesting the completest quietude was floating on the water, straight and horizontal, as if reposing on a bed.
A man came creeping up to me, because the slope of the deck prevented him from holding himself upright: it was Hurliguerly, working himself along with his hands like a top-man on a yard. Stretched out at full length, my feet propped up against the jamb of the door, I held out my hand to the boatswain, and helped him, not without difficulty, to hoist himself up near me.
"Depend on it," said the top-man, "he must somehow have thought I was making sport of him a while ago, when I was only taking off old Priming, the gunner's mate. Just look at him once, White-Jacket, while I make believe coil this here rope; if there arn't a dozen in that 'ere Captain's top-lights, my name is horse-marine.
Now the Surgeon of the Fleet and the top-man presented a spectacle which, to a reflecting mind, was better than a church-yard sermon on the mortality of man. Here was a sailor, who four days previous, had stood erect a pillar of life with an arm like a royal-mast and a thigh like a windlass.
The assemblage of gold-laced surgeons now ascended to the quarter-deck; the second cutter was called away by the bugler, and, one by one, they were dropped aboard of their respective ships. The following evening the mess-mates of the top-man rowed his remains ashore, and buried them in the ever-vernal Protestant cemetery, hard by the Beach of the Flamingoes, in plain sight from the bay.
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