“Veil, only dwenty-dwo. I steech opp half a leedle ship’s company mit cholera. Dere vhas fifteen all toldt. Sefen diedt. I steech ’em opp. I tell you, Mr. Fielding, vhen dot shob vhas ofer I feels like drinkin’.” “Vhas he to be all night below?” said Galen. “Yaw,” said I. “Aboot der vatches, Mr. Fielding?” exclaimed Bol. “Let that matter stand till we bury the captain.” “Ay, ay, sir. Galen is der man, I belief.” “She vhas villing,” said Galen. I left the deck for a few minutes to view the body of my poor friend in his sea-shroud. Miss Aurora sat at the table. She drummed with her brilliant fingers, and her head rested on her left hand. Her face was unusually pale; her eyes large, alarmed, and fiery, and blacker, owing to her pallor, than they commonly showed. “What is it?” said I, conceiving that something was wrong with her. “Ave Maria, hark!” cried she. I heard Galloon whining and complaining. Never did a more melancholy, depressing, heart-subduing noise thread the conflicting uproar of a ship in labor. I at once let Galloon into the captain’s cabin, and paused a minute to view the shrouded figure upon which the dog had sprung; and I remember thinking to myself: “Great is the difference between the dead at sea and the dead ashore. At sea the dead man cannot be tyrannous; but ashore, how does he serve his relatives and the world which he leaves behind? A dismal funeral bell is rung for him, and the spirits of a whole district are dejected--the spirits of a wide district that may never have his name, or that, very well knowing his name, values not his loss at the paring of a finger nail, are sunk because of that dreadful knell. He obliges his survivors to draw down the blinds of the house in which he expires, and, for the inside of a week, they sit in gloom, a sort of pariahs, coming and going with fugitive swiftness, miserable all, until it is _convenient_ to him to be buried. He defrauds his next of kin of good money by the obligation of a solemn and expensive funeral. He tyrannically robs his relatives by obliging them to put up a memorial to him. But at sea? A piece of canvas and a twenty-four pound shot; a little hole in the water, which is gone ere the eye can behold it! The dead cannot be tyrannous at sea.” “Señor Fielding,” said my lady Aurora, rising and holding my arm as I was about to pass, “I cannot rest down here with the dead.”