The officers are more watchful, and the crew go
more carefully aloft.
The lost man is seldom mentioned, or is
dismissed with a sailor's rude eulogy - "Well, poor George is gone!
His cruise is up soon! He knew his work, and did his duty, and was
a good shipmate." Then usually follows some allusion to another world,
for sailors are almost all believers; but their notions and opinions
are unfixed and at loose ends. They say, - "God won't be hard upon
the poor fellow," and seldom get beyond the common phrase which seems
to imply that their sufferings and hard treatment here will excuse
them hereafter, - "To work hard, live hard, die hard, and go to hell
after all, would be hard indeed!" Our cook, a simple-hearted old
African, who had been through a good deal in his day, and was rather
seriously inclined, always going to church twice a day when on shore,
and reading his Bible on a Sunday in the galley, talked to the crew
about spending their Sabbaths badly, and told them that they might
go as suddenly as George had, and be as little prepared.
Yet a sailor's life is at best, but a mixture of a little good with
much evil, and a little pleasure with much pain. The beautiful is
linked with the revolting, the sublime with the commonplace, and the
solemn with the ludicrous.
We had hardly returned on board with our sad report, before an
auction was held of the poor man's clothes. The captain had first,
however, called all hands aft and asked them if they were satisfied
that everything had been done to save the man, and if they thought
there was any use in remaining there longer. The crew all said that
it was in vain, for the man did not know how to swim, and was very
heavily dressed. So we then filled away and kept her off to her course.
The laws regulating navigation make the captain answerable for the
effects of a sailor who dies during the voyage, and it is either a law
or a universal custom, established for convenience, that the captain
should immediately hold an auction of his things, in which they are
bid off by the sailors, and the sums which they give are deducted from
their wages at the end of the voyage. In this way the trouble and
risk of keeping his things through the voyage are avoided, and the
clothes are usually sold for more than they would be worth on shore.
Accordingly, we had no sooner got the ship before the wind, than
his chest was brought up upon the forecastle, and the sale began.
The jackets and trowsers in which we had seen him dressed but a few
days before, were exposed and bid off while the life was hardly out
of his body, and his chest was taken aft and used as a store-chest,
so that there was nothing left which could be called his.
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