s and
cockroaches. I rigged a wind-scoop through the port in my room, got
into pyjamas, and lay down on the top of the bunk. But I can't say I did
much business with sleep; the menagerie held cheerful meetings all
round, and the perspiration tickled as it ran off my body in little
streams; and these things keep a man awake. My room was to starboard,
and when through the porthole I saw day blaze up from behind the low
line of African hills, I turned out, rolled a cigarette, and went on
deck. I was just in time to see the first funeral.

Four very frightened-looking men and a profane mate were fitting a
couple of biscuit sacks over a twisted figure which lay on the grimy
greasy deck planks. They pulled one over the head and another over the
heels, and then with a palm and needle made them fast about the figure's
middle. Afterwards they lashed a fire-bar along the shins, and then,
with faces screwed up and turned away, they lifted the body as though it
had been red-hot, and toppled it over the rail.

The dead man dived through the swell alongside almost without a splash;
but, as though his coming had been a signal, a dozen streaks of foam
started up from various points, each with a black triangular fin in the
middle of it; and I did not feel any the happier from knowing precisely
what that convoy meant.

However, the sharks and the body drifted away into the wake astern, and
I rolled another cigarette and got a chair and sat on the break of the
bridge deck. From there I saw the mate and his four hands fetch one by
one five other bodies out of the forecastle, and prepare them for
burial. Three they covered with canvas; and then the supply of biscuit
sacks seemed to run out, because the last two they put over the side
with the fire-bar attachment only.

The fifth man had to be content with four participators in his funeral.
The remaining sailor held strangely aloof; his face turning through a
prism of curious colours; his body swaying in uncouth jerks. As the
fifth corpse toppled over the rail, this fellow threw himself down on
the hatch cover, and lay there writhing and screaming in a torment of
cramps.

At that moment a man in a white serge cassock, which reached to his
heels, came out of one of the forecastle doors and walked rapidly across
to the new victim. He was a long lean man with a hawk's nose, and bright
large eyes. The skin of his face was like baggy yellow leather, and it
was dry with fever. As he knelt be