ctor added a note:--

"Of the crew of three men, the skipper having been washed overboard by a
sea, but two remain, and they have signed."

The two sailors affixed their names underneath the note. The northern
Basque signed himself, GALDEAZUN.

The southern Basque signed, AVE MARIA: _Robber_.

Then the doctor said,--

"Capgaroupe."

"Here," said the Provencal.

"Have you Hardquanonne's flask?"

"Yes."

"Give it me."

Capgaroupe drank off the last mouthful of brandy, and handed the flask
to the doctor.

The water was rising in the hold; the wreck was sinking deeper and
deeper into the sea. The sloping edges of the ship were covered by a
thin gnawing wave, which was rising. All were crowded on the centre of
the deck.

The doctor dried the ink on the signatures by the heat of the torch, and
folding the parchment into a narrower compass than the diameter of the
neck, put it into the flask. He called for the cork.

"I don't know where it is," said Capgaroupe.

"Here is a piece of rope," said Jacques Quartourze.

The doctor corked the flask with a bit of rope, and asked for some tar.
Galdeazun went forward, extinguished the signal light with a piece of
tow, took the vessel in which it was contained from the stern, and
brought it, half full of burning tar, to the doctor.

The flask holding the parchment which they had all signed was corked and
tarred over.

"It is done," said the doctor.

And from out all their mouths, vaguely stammered in every language, came
the dismal utterances of the catacombs.

"Ainsi soit-il!"

"Mea culpa!"

"Asi sea!"

"Aro rai!"

"Amen!"

It was as though the sombre voices of Babel were scattered through the
shadows as Heaven uttered its awful refusal to hear them.

The doctor turned away from his companions in crime and distress, and
took a few steps towards the gunwale. Reaching the side, he looked into
space, and said, in a deep voice,--

"Bist du bei mir?"[8]

Perchance he was addressing some phantom.

The wreck was sinking.

Behind the doctor all the others were in a dream. Prayer mastered them
by main force. They did not bow, they were bent. There was something
involuntary in their condition; they wavered as a sail flaps when the
breeze fails. And the haggard group took by degrees, with clasping of
hands and prostration of foreheads, attitudes various, yet of
humiliation. Some strange reflection of the deep seemed to soften their
villainous features.