To these the chains of the windlasses were fastened on. They then looped a rope around the ankle of the corpse, and gave it, as the post of honour, to me to hold. It was on the evening of Sunday[28] that all this was done; and I have deemed it a venial breach of discipline to omit the nightly service of the church, in order to suit the tide. Forty strong parishioners, all absentees from evening prayer, manned the double windlass power; I intoned the pull; and by a strong and blended effort, the rocky mass was slowly, silently and gently upheaved; a slight haul at the rope, and up to our startled view and to the sudden lights, came forth the altered, ghastly, flattened semblance of a man! “My brother! my brother!” shrieked a well-known voice at my side, and tears of gratitude and suffering gushed in mingled torrent over his rugged cheek. A coffin had been made ready, under the hope of final success; and therein we reverently laid the disfigured carcass of one who, a little while before, had been the young and joyous inmate of a fond and happy home. We had to clamber up a steep and difficult pathway along the cliff with the body, which was carried by the bearers in a kind of funeral train. The vicar of course led the way.[29] When we were about half-way up, a singular and striking event occurred, which moved us all exceedingly. Unobserved, for all were intent in their solemn task, a vessel had neared the shore: she lay to, and, as it seemed, had watched us with night-glasses from the deck, or had discerned us from the torches and lanterns in our hands. For all at once there sounded along the air three deep and thrilling cheers! And we could see that the crew on board had manned their yards. It was manifest that their loyal and hearty voices and gestures were intended to greet our fulfilment of duty to a brother mariner’s remains. The burial-place of the dead sailors in this churchyard is a fair and fitting scene for their quiet rest. Full in view, and audible in sound, for ever rolls the sea. Is it not to them a soothing requiem that Old Ocean, with its everlasting voice, As in perpetual jubilee, proclaims The praises of the Almighty?