Perhaps he was? Doubt survived Jimmy; and, like a community of banded criminals disintegrated by a touch of grace, we were profoundly scandalised with each other. Men spoke unkindly to their best chums. Others refused to speak at all. Singleton only was not surprised. ‘Dead -- is he? Of course,’ he said, pointing at the island right abeam: for the calm still held the ship spell-bound within sight of Flores. Dead -- of course. He wasn't surprised. Here was the land, and there, on the forehatch and waiting for the sailmaker -- there was that corpse. Cause and effect. And for the fist time that voyage, the old seaman became quite cheery and garrulous, explaining and illustrating from the stores of experience how, in sickness, the sight of an island (even a very small one) is generally more fatal than the view of a continent. But he couldn't explain why.
Jimmy was to be buried at five, and it was a long day till then -- a day of mental disquiet and even of physical disturbance. We took no interest in our work and, very properly, were rebuked for it. This, in our constant state of hungry irritation, was exasperating. Donkin worked with his brow bound in a dirty rag, and looked so ghastly that Mr. Baker was touched with compassion at the sight of this plucky suffering. -- ‘Ough!
You, Donkin! Put down your work and go lay-up this watch. You look ill.’-- ‘Hi ham, sir -- in my 'ead,’ he said in a subdued voice, and vanished speedily. This annoyed many, and they thought the mate ‘bloomin' soft to-day.’ Captain Allistoun could be seen on the poop watching the sky cloud over from the south-west, and it soon got to be known about the decks that the barometer had begun to fall in the night and that a breeze might be expected before long. This, by a subtle association of ideas, led to violent quarrelling as to the exact moment of Jimmy's death. Was it before or after ‘that 'ere glass started down’? It was impossible to know and it caused much contemptuous growling at one another. All of a sudden there was a great tumult forward.
Pacific Knowles and good-tempered Davies had come to blows over it. The watch below interfered with spirit, and for ten minutes there was a noisy scrimmage round the hatch, where, in the balancing shade of the sails, Jimmy's body, wrapped Page 117up in a white blanket, was watched over by the sorrowful Belfast, who, in his desolation, disdained the fray. When the noise had ceased, and the passions had calmed into surly silence, he stood up at the head of the swathed body, and lifting both arms on high, cried with pained indignation:
-- ‘You ought to be ashamed of your-selves!....’ We were.
Belfast took his bereavement very hard. He gave proofs of unextinguishable devotion. It was he, and no other man, who would help the sailmaker to prepare what was left of Jimmy for a solemn surrender to the insatiable sea. He arranged the weights carefully at the feet; two holystones, an old anchor-shackle without its pin, some broken links of a worn-out stream cable. He arranged them this way, then that. ‘Bless my soul! you aren't afraid he will chafe his heel?’ said the sailmaker, who hated the job. He pushed the needle, puffing furiously, with his head in a cloud of tobacco smoke; he turned the flaps over, pulled at the stitches, stretched the canvas. -- ‘Lift his shoulders....Pull to you a bit....So -- o -- o -- . Steady.’ Belfast obeyed, pulled, lifted, overcome with sorrow, dropping tears on the tarred twine. -- ‘Don't you drag the canvas too taut over his poor face, Sails,’ he entreated tearfully. -- ‘What are you fashing yourself for? He will be comfortable enough,’ assured the sailmaker, cutting the thread after the last stitch, that came about the middle of Jimmy's forehead.
He rolled up the remaining canvas, put away the needles. ‘What makes you take on so?’ he asked. Belfast looked down at the long package of grey sailcloth. -- ‘I pulled him out,’ he whispered, ‘and he did not want to go. If I had sat up with him last night he would have kept alive for me....but something made me tired.’The sailmaker took vigorous draws at his pipe and mumbled: -- ‘When I....West India Station....In the Blanche frigate....Yellow Jack....sewed in twenty men a day....Portsmouth -- Devonport men -- townies -- knew their fathers, mothers -- sisters -- the whole boiling of 'em. Thought nothing of it. And these niggers like this one -- you don't know where it comes from. Got nobody. No use to nobody. Who will miss him?’ -- ‘Ido -- I pulled him out,’ mourned Belfast dismally.
