e round the hatch, where, in the balancing shade of the sails,
Jimmy's body, wrapped up 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, lifting both arms on
high, cried with pained indignation:--"You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves!..." 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, purring furiously, with his
head in a cloud of tobacco smoke; he turned the flaps over, pulled at
the stitches, stretched at 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, which 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 week... Portsmouth-Devon-port
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?"--"I do--I pulled him out," mourned Belfast dismally.

On two planks nailed together and apparently resigned and still under
the folds of the Union Jack with a white border, James Wait, carried
aft by four men, wa