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- 3267
- extracted_at
- 2026-01-30T20:48:26.981Z
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- 3199
- text
- changing his tone, ‘there is a case in the sick-bay that I do not care
to leave to my assistants. Beg your pardon, but excuse me.’ And rising
from the mess he formally withdrew.
-----
Footnote 8:
Written in pencil above this ‘one,’ an ‘eight,’ allowing a choice of
readings.
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XXIII
The silence at the moment of execution, and for a moment or two
continuing thereafter, but emphasised by the regular wash of the sea
against the hull, or the flutter of a sail caused by the helmsman’s eyes
being tempted astray, this emphasised silence was gradually disturbed by
a sound not easily to be verbally rendered. Whoever has heard the
freshet-wave of a torrent suddenly swelled by pouring showers in
tropical mountains, showers not shared by the plain; whoever has heard
the first muffled murmur of its sloping advance through precipitous
woods, may form some conception of the sound now heard. The seeming
remoteness of its source was because of its murmurous indistinctness,
since it came from close by, even from the men massed on the ship’s open
deck. Being inarticulate, it was dubious in significance further than it
seemed to indicate some capricious revulsion of thought or feeling such
as mobs ashore are liable to, in the present instance possibly implying
a sullen revocation on the men’s part of their involuntary echoing of
Billy’s benediction. But ere the murmur had time to wax into clamour it
was met by a strategic command, the more telling that it came with
abrupt unexpectedness.
‘Pipe down the starboard watch, boatswain, and see that they go.’
Shrill as the shriek of the sea-hawk the whistles of the boatswain and
his mates pierced that ominous low sound, dissipating it; and yielding
to the mechanism of discipline the throng was thinned by one half. For
the remainder, most of them were set to temporary employments connected
with trimming the yards and so forth, business readily to be found upon
occasion by any officer-of-the-deck.
Now each proceeding that follows a mortal sentence pronounced at sea by
a drum-head court is characterised by promptitude not perceptibly
merging into hurry, though bordering that. The hammock, the one which
had been Billy’s bed when alive, having already been ballasted with
shot, and otherwise prepared to serve for his canvas coffin, the last
office of the sea-undertakers, the sail-maker’s mates, was now speedily
completed. When everything was in readiness a second call for all hands,
made necessary by the strategic movement before mentioned, was sounded,
and now to witness burial.
The details of this closing formality it needs not to give. But when the
tilted plank let slide its freight into the sea, a second strange human
murmur was heard, blended now with another inarticulate sound proceeding
from certain larger sea-fowl, who, their attention having been attracted
by the peculiar commotion in the water resulting from the heavy sloped
dive of the shotted hammock into the sea, flew screaming to the spot. So
near the hull did they come, that the stridor or bony creak of their
gaunt double-jointed pinions was audible. As the ship under light airs
passed on, leaving the burial spot astern, they still kept circling it
low down with the moving shadow of their outstretched wings and the
croaked requiem of their cries.
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