[Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas by Herman Melville]@TWC D-Link bookOmoo: Adventures in the South Seas CHAPTER XII 5/10
Some additional ceremony, however, was now insisted upon, and a Bible was called for.
But none was to be had, not even a Prayer Book.
When this was made known, Antone, a Portuguese, from the Cape-de-Verd Islands, stepped up, muttering something over the corpse of his countryman, and, with his finger, described upon the back of the hammock the figure of a large cross; whereupon it received the death-launch. These two men both perished from the proverbial indiscretions of seamen, heightened by circumstances apparent; but had either of them been ashore under proper treatment, he would, in all human probability, have recovered. Behold here the fate of a sailor! They give him the last toss, and no one asks whose child he was. For the rest of that night there was no more sleep.
Many stayed on deck until broad morning, relating to each other those marvellous tales of the sea which the occasion was calculated to call forth. Little as I believed in such things, I could not listen to some of these stories unaffected.
Above all was I struck by one of the carpenter's. On a voyage to India, they had a fever aboard, which carried off nearly half the crew in the space of a few days.
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