ockcrow, with the
man you're to put in it looking at you! Why could n't he be buried at
sea, decent and respectable, like other folk?"

"It was his will,--that's all I know," said the first; "just as it was
his will, when he found he was a dying man, to come booming away from
the gold seas up here to a land where there is n't no gold, and never
will be. Belike he thought he'd find waiting for him at the bottom of
the sea, all along from the Lucayas to Cartagena, the many he sent
there afore he died. And Captain Paradise, he says, says he: 'It's ill
crossing a dead man. We'll obey him this once more'"--

"Captain Paradise!" cried he of the ruff. "Who made him captain?--curse
him!"

His fellow straightened himself with a jerk. "Who made him captain? The
ship will make him captain. Who else should be captain?"

"Red Gil!"

"Red Gil!" exclaimed the other. "I'd rather have the Spaniard!"

"The Spaniard would do well enough, if the rest of us were n't English.
If hating every other Spaniard would do it, he'd be English fast
enough."

The scoundrel with the broken head burst into a loud laugh. "D' ye
remember the bark we took off Porto Bello, with the priests aboard? Oho!
Oho!"

The rogue with the ruff grinned. "I reckon the padres remember it, and
find hell easy lying. This hole's deep enough, I'm thinking."

They both clambered out, and one squatted at the head of the grave and
mopped his face with his delicate handkerchief, while the other swung
his fine cloak with an air and dug his bare toes in the sand.

The two boats now grated upon the beach, and several of their occupants,
springing out, dragged them up on the sand.

"We'll never get another like him that's gone," said the worthy at the
head of the grave, gloomily regarding the something wrapped in white.

"That's gospel truth," assented the other, with a prodigious sigh. "He
was a man what was a man. He never stuck at nothing. Don or priest, man
or woman, good red gold or dirty silver,--it was all one to him. But
he's dead and gone!"

"Now, if we had a captain like Kirby," suggested the first.

"Kirby keeps to the Summer Isles," said the second. "'T is n't often now
that he swoops down as far as the Indies."

The man with the broken head laughed. "When he does, there's a noise in
that part of the world."

"And that's gospel truth, too," swore the other, with an oath of
admiration.

By this the score or more who had come in the two boats were hal