“No, sir.”
“And don’t look at my things again, please. I know it’s your job to tidy my cabin, but there must be some proper expectation of privacy.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lenox paused. “Incidentally, could you go to the galley and sort me out a piece of that cinnamon toast? And maybe a cup of that Chinese tea I brought, the dark stuff?”
“Oh, of course, sir.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The body of Lieutenant Thomas St. James Halifax having been thoroughly examined and, of course, confirmed dead, that night the men of the Lucy made preparation for its burial at sea.
As the hour of the ceremony marched closer—all men on board knew from their superiors, down to the purser’s third assistant, that it was to be at half past five—a deep melancholy took hold of the ship. The men were quiet in their preparations. Lenox observed them, two sailors letting the starboard gangway out, a group of others clearing the main deck and furling the mainmast’s sails tight around it, four more bringing a long mess table onto the deck and setting it beside the open gangway.
Martin himself supervised them, and also ordered the sails set in counterpoise to each other, so that the ship would be as perfectly still as possible. Then he called out, “Top gallant yards, acock bill,” an order that sent men scurrying up the rigging.
As soon as the gangway was folded out and the Lucy was as near motionless as the rocking of the ocean would permit, men began to head below deck, the officers, the warrant officers, the midshipmen, the bluejackets, the marines, all in a great drove, to change into their best dress.
Lenox, already in a black suit, stayed above, and found himself nearly the only person there.
Downstairs, he knew from Tradescant, the sailmaker was sewing Halifax’s body into a snow-white sheet, with two cannonballs at his feet to weigh him down. The last stitch would go through his nose, by old naval custom, as a final confirmation that he was dead.
At five fifteen the men began to assemble on deck in long, tidy rows, all dressed in their white duck trousers, blue shirts, and blue caps. Usually a gathering of this variety on ship was loud, but nobody spoke now. Then the officers came on board; each, Lenox saw, was carrying a white flower.
“You will stand with us, Mr. Lenox?” said Martin, coming up from behind him with his tricorn hat tucked under his arm.
“I should be honored.”
When several minutes later they were all assembled and the body in its white sailcloth had been hauled onto the deck and laid out on the long mess table, the bosun—a sort of head sailor, in charge of various small crews of seamen, generally the soundest naval mind at a captain’s disposal—piped, and then called out “Ship’s company, off hats!” in a loud voice that seemed to carry unnaturally in that great void of ocean.
The men removed their hats.
The chaplain stepped forward before the men and began to speak. In their short acquaintance he had been a figure of fun, of comedy, to Lenox, but in his vestments now he looked terribly grave, and his booming voice seemed free of the slur it took when he drank spirits.
“We come here today to bury at sea a good and God-fearing man, Lieutenant Thomas Halifax. May he rest in peace.
“I shall read from the book of Job, and from the book of John.” The chaplain sighed heavily, and then spoke. “‘He brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’”
“Blessed be the name of the Lord,” the ship’s company chanted back.
The chaplain went on. “‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ Amen.”
“Amen.”
Now the chaplain began to read from Lamentations, following them with two psalms, the thirtieth and the ninetieth. Lenox listened to them more as music than as words, and found himself staring into the soft golden twilight, the birds wheeling through it, the ocean mapping the light, the sky clear and more white than blue. A great hollow feeling came into his chest, almost like tears, of something inarticulate and enormous, something he only vaguely understood.
The chaplain finished and motioned the four remaining lieutenants, Billings, Carrow, Lee, and Mitchell, forward. Each took one corner of the mess table upon which Halifax, sewn into his sail, was laid. As the chaplain spoke again they walked the table down the starboard gangway and slowly, agonizingly slowly, began to tip the body into the sea.
“We therefore commit the body of our brother and shipmate Thomas Halifax to the deep, looking for general resurrection in the last day, and the life of the world to come, through our Lord Jesus Christ; at whose Second Coming in glorious majesty to judge the world, the sea shall give up her dead; and the corruptible bodies of those who sleep in him shall be changed, and made like unto his glorious body; according to the mighty working whereby he is able to subdue all things unto himself.
“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless and keep him. The Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him. The Lord lift his countenance upon him, and give him peace. Amen.”
“Amen,” the ship’s company called back.
The body slid heavily from the table and for a brief moment seemed to hang in the air, then broke the water’s surface with a tremendous crash. For a moment, not longer, a white ghost lingered in the sea, but before anyone could be sure they had seen a final glimpse of the ensheeted body it was already speeding toward the depths.
The officers and the captain now went to the rail and each threw his flower onto the water. Full fathom five thy father lies, went through Lenox’s head, an old schooldays’ memorization, of his bones are coral made: Those are pearls that were his eyes; nothing of him that doth fade, But doth suffer a sea-change into something rich and strange. Sea-nymphs hourly ring his belclass="underline" Hark, now I hear them, ding-dong bell. There was something far worse about a body going into the water than into the ground; far worse.
Now the captain stepped forward and gazed out over the men he commanded. He was such a very religious man that Lenox expected words of Christian emphasis, but apparently that role had been filled by the chaplain. For his part, Martin spoke of Halifax as a naval man.
“This is an unhappy burial, I know—but refuse to believe, for to be buried at sea is a great honor for a proper man of Her Majesty’s navy, as Thomas Halifax was, and though his virtues would have well adorned a longer life, though his service to our Queen was too brief in duration, though his death was an unfair and bitterly hard-fought one, at the hands of a peasant and coward, nevertheless he goes to the same deeps Drake did, the same deeps to which his grandfather’s body fell. And in that there must be great honor. He is numbered among us, a man of our ship the Lucy. May none of you forget that, until the last who stands among us on this deck draws his final breath. Whomever it shall be.”
The bosun stepped forward again. “Ship’s company, on hats!” he cried. The men put their blue cloth caps back on and started, with a low murmur of conversation, to go back below deck to change, and many of them soon to eat.
The officers watched them go and then Martin, his face flushed red—though it was impossible to say whether with emotion or cold, for the sun had all but gone—turned and said, “I invite you all to my dining room for supper. The midshipmen will be with us too. In honor of Halifax.”
The officers murmured their assent, and began to go below deck themselves.
This supper was a downhearted affair despite the captain’s excellent food and wine, although for Lenox the affair was somewhat enlivened because he was able to snatch a few moments of conversation with his nephew.