the water. We looked astern. There it floated, with the arms spread
out, and the face turned towards us, for the handkerchief had fallen off
the head. Its lips seemed to move. I thought it was uttering a
well-merited curse on the hateful craft we were on board. It seemed to
be about to spring out of the water. I could not help crying out. I
shrieked, I believe. Many of the pirates looked with horror. "Is he
following us?" I cried. No. Down sunk the body from sight, as if
dragged by some force from below. "Ah, a shark has got him!" said
Silva, who had been looking on with the rest. Many of the ruffians
shuddered, for they knew full well that such might any day be their own
fate.

While this scene was enacting, a similar one was taking place on board
the _Dove_. Her captors, having time to look about them, had taken up
the bodies of poor Captain Stone and the other Kanaka, and, without
shroud or a shot to their feet, had hove them overboard. They also were
immediately attacked by the sharks. Jerry and I shuddered, as well we
might. The doctor looked on with more composure. "It matters little
whether sharks or animalculae first devour a body," he observed. "One
or other will inevitably swallow it before long, only the sharks make
greater speed with the process. Happily there is an essence which
neither one nor the other can destroy, which survives triumphant over
death; so, lads, when you mourn the loss of a friend, think of him as
living in that essence, not in the mortal frame you see torn to pieces
or mouldering in decay." A new light seemed to burst on me as the
doctor said this. The idea aided me to get over the horror I had felt
at seeing the fate of the missionary captain, and enabled me better to
bear the first remark which the pirate leader deigned to make us: "Well,
youngsters, if you don't behave yourselves, you'll come to that very
quickly, let me tell you."

"We have no wish to do otherwise than behave ourselves, sir," answered
Jerry in his politest way. "Perhaps you will tell us what you wish to
have done?"

"To hold your tongue and be hanged," answered the ruffian, turning
aside; for Jerry's coolness puzzled and enraged him.

The doctor was now summoned down below to look after some sick men, the
mate, who called him, said; but, as Jerry whispered, he suspected they
were sick from having swallowed more bullets than they liked. We two,
in the meantime, sat ourselves down on a gun