The Alcestis moved slowly through the sluggish Water; within a few moments, her engines would be stopped for the burial, and the run-down had to be as gradual as possible, for reasons which the Chief Engineer Officer could, if called upon, explain cogently enough. There was a slight breeze, ruffling the bare heads of all who stood in the small space below the after-deck; it came from the newly opened void in the ship's side, the mouth of the grave. The attendance was small; four officers, a mixed dozen of the crew, and about thirty of the passengers. As far as the latter were concerned, Captain Harmer always tried to keep the occasion as unobtrusive as he decently could; a death on board, particularly during a cruise when the average age was over sixty, was deeply disturbing, and the less advertisement it received, the better. The nurse was crying, he observed with surprise; an unusual reaction for a nurse, implying —if it implied anything—that she was concerned on a non-professional basis. She had loved the dead man? She was now out of a job? She blamed herself for something not done, or inadequately done? The Doctor, always involved when people started to cry, would tell him later.
"In the midst of life we are in death," said the Captain, shifting his feet as his ship rolled gently in the long South Atlantic swell. In a small way, that fact was always true for Myth Lines; on any voyage, they carried six coffins, a discreet portion of the Purser's empire which lay hidden until called for. But it must have been true also—he looked down at the ever-present shape on the deck, the mound covered by the flaring colours of the Stars and Stripes— it must have been true for the dead man, George Morgan Simms, retired business executive, who had lived with death for more than ten years (so the Doctor said), on whom, indeed, death had long fed with unobtrusive appetite.
Probably he had known, when he was wheeled on board at New York, that he would never be wheeled off again; but he had chosen this sort of death, this sort of occasion, with the sun warming him for the last time and the horizon bare of buildings, of hospital walls, of relatives. Yet perhaps he could not quite have foreseen that he would leave the ship, taking the long dive seawards, in a hundred fathoms of cloudy water off the mouth of the Amazon. For an American, for anyone, the Equator was an odd place to die, and odder still for a graveyard.
"Suffer us not," said the Captain, "at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from thee." The warning words, of course, were for the spectators; if Simms could die, they could all die; let them take care to do it in piety. He glanced round, wondering what the ceremony meant to the onlookers, and why they were there. Curiosity? Religious conviction? Respect for the dead? None of them had known Simms. No one had known Simms; not more than six people had set eyes on him during the past month and a half. Simms had been an idea within the ship, a cautionary item of lading; he was present whenever one thought of him—by accident, by overhearing his name, when sad or lonely or drunk—and absent when he passed out of mind.
Now it was time to make him absent for ever.
The Captain raised his head, and nodded unobtrusively to Tiptree-Jones, standing to one side at the back of the attendant circle. Tiptree-Jones pressed a bell twice, a prearranged signal to the bridge. Deep within the ship, they could all hear the clang of the telegraphs, and then the beat of the engines died, and way fell off the Alcestis.
The Captain braced his shoulders, face to face with the part he hated. "For as much as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to take unto Himself the soul of our dear brother here departed; we therefore commit his body to the deep." By the open space in the ship's side, the bearers bent and tipped the small platform bearing the coffin; it slid away from them, into the burning sunshine, and down out of sight, as if sponged away from a pale blue slate.
There was a farewell to be spoken at the same time. "/«sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life," said the Captain, "through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be like unto His glorious body."
As his voice ceased, all of them were left staring at the empty space, the astonishing void. A few faces were stony, but most betrayed a genuine bereavement. There could be no more irrevocable burial than a burial at sea. It did not need the gentle returning pulse of the engines to tell them that it was too late to do anything, that they were abandoning for ever the old man whom no one had known.
The Captain returned to his prayer book, making his voice as strong as possible, to atone for all their guilt. "I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write; From henceforth blessed are the dead which die in the Lord; even so, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours."
As usual for the Captain, that was all; he always ended on the phrase"they rest from their labours", which at such moments seemed the point of the ceremony, and perhaps the point of life. There were sentences later on which he never read out loud, which he did not believe in and could not stomach; the part where they were asked to give hearty thanks to God for delivering this our brother out of the miseries of this sinful world. Of course it was meant to cheer people up, but it was utterly false, it was a lie. Hearty thanks. . . . Life was not miserable; sometimes it was dull or ugly, but on balance it was beautiful and exciting, and it was a shame to die and a shame to be snatched away from it, and a shame to be left a mourner.
He put on his cap, while Tim Mansell, who was in charge of the burial party, set them to work dismantling the pivoted platform and securing the huge water-tight entrance-doors again. The machinery of these occasions was always a bit obtrusive. . . . Harmer nodded to the passengers, and murmured "Thank you for coming" as he passed by them. Going forward, his footfalls echoing in the long passageway, he fell into step beside Tiptree-Jones.
"Thank you, First," he said formally. "Everything went off well. See that it's logged, and I'll sign it."
"Yes, sir," said Tiptree-Jones. In this aftermath, his face and bearing were both especially noble, but for once the Captain forgave him. These things were always sad, always hopelessly final; nothing could change that, or detract from it.
"Crossing the Line," said the Captain after a moment. "When was that laid on for?"
"Tomorrow morning, eleven o'clock," answered Tiptree-Jones.
"We'd better scrub it out," said the Captain. The uninhibited, sometimes raucous ceremonies to mark the crossing of the Equator might have served to cheer the ship up, but he did not feel like doing it that way. "It's not really suitable. People will understand."
"Of course they will, sir. I'll tell the Purser."
"And cable head office again about Simms."
"Yes, sir."
"I won't come down to dinner."
2
Everyone felt like that, for a number of hours afterwards; they fell out of love with parties, they did not want to meet other people, they preferred to keep to their cabins until the blackest shadow in the world had passed. Much of this feeling stemmed outwards from the nurse, a slightly melodramatic creature whose finest hour this was.
"I shouldn't have left him alone," she declared, not once but a score of times. "He promised me he felt all right!" No one blamed her, everyone patted her shoulder and told her not to feel badly about it, it might have happened any time, they knew for a fact that Simms hadn't suffered a thing. But there were private thoughts to match this gloss on reality, private pictures of an old man dying alone in terror, reaching for a bell in the darkness, not making it, gasping out his life while just above his head the band played on and the glasses clinked. As long as the memory and the pictures were fresh, no one wanted the band to play, and they preferred to clink their glasses in private.