He had signed on for the trip, to take care of
the sheep on the upper deck;

There was a weak, pathetic cockney, who died of sun-stroke;

The ex-jockey, a bit of a man with a withered left arm--made that way
from an injury received in his last race, when his mount fell on him;

There was the West Indian Negro, a woolly, ebony wisp of a creature, a
great believer in ghosts (he who thought we stowaways were ghosts when
we hid under the bunk). The Irish cattle-boss gave him the job of
night-watchman, "to break him of his superstitious silliness";

There was the big, black Jamaica cook ... as black as if he was polished
ebony ... a fine, big, polite chap, whom everyone liked. He had a white
wife in Southampton (the sailors who had seen her said she was pretty
... that the cook was true to her ... that she came down to the boat the
minute the _South Sea King_ reached an English port, they loved each
other so deeply!) ...

Then there was the giant of an Irishman ... who, working side by side
with me in the hold, shovelling out cattle-ordure there with me,
informed me that I looked as if I had consumption ... that I would not
be able to stand the terrific heat for many days without keeling over
... but, his prediction came true of himself, not of me.

One morning, not many days out, the little West Indian watchman,
bringing down the before-daylight coffee and ships-biscuits and rousing
the men, as was his duty,--found the big fellow, with whom he used to
crack cheery jokes, apparently sound asleep. The watchman shook him by
the foot to rouse him ... found his big friend stiff and cold.

The watchman let out a scream of horror that woke us right and proper,
for _that_ day....

The next day was Sunday. It was a still, religious afternoon.

We men ranged in two rows aft. The body had been sewn up in coarse
canvas, the Union Jack draped over it.

The captain, dapper in his gold-braided uniform, stood over the body as
it lay on the plank from which it was to descend into the sea. In a
high, clear voice he read that beautiful burial-service for the dead ...
an upward tilt of the board in the hands of two brown-armed seamen, the
body flashed over the side, to swing feet-down, laden with shot, for
interminable days and nights, in the vast tides of the Pacific.

No one reached quickly enough. The Union Jack went off with the body,
like a floral decoration flung after....

* * * * *

We dran