"They've taken their time," snarled his companion, "and us two here on this d-d island with a dead man the whole ghost's hour. Boarding a ship's nothing, but to dig a grave on the land before cockcrow, 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."