'A strange piece?' I exclaimed, scarcely understanding the expression. 'Had it anything to do with the "Lady Emma"?'
'Why, no,' he answered, leaning upon the rail and looking with a seaman's level, steady gaze at the orange-coloured sail on the horizon, talking carelessly, in evident intention to amuse me merely, 'a large three-masted schooner picked up the body of a woman much about the parts where the hull of the "Lady Emma" was washing about. The master took it to be the corpse of the wife of a friend of his, and put it into brine or spirit to preserve it for Christian interment ashore. A queer item of cargo, little relished by the jacks in the schooner, I warrant ye! And yet handsomely done, too, on the part of the master, if you think of it; for suppose one dear to you drowned, what would you give that the remains should be buried with a memorial atop? That's always the feeling along-shore, even amongst the humblest; they'll offer pounds reward for the body. It's sentiment--and only to bury it in earth after all; as if this,' said he, waving his hand, 'wasn't the freshest, the most spacious, the most splendid of all cemeteries, every white curl of sea a tombstone, and God's voice in the wind to keep ye sleeping and comforted.'
'The schooner carried the body to the Cape,' he went on, 'where of course it was promptly buried after they had photographed the poor thing.'
'Did they photograph the body?' I exclaimed.
He whipped upon me quickly, struck by my tone, no doubt, and eyed me keenly. He witnessed a change of face, and perhaps a sudden pallor, but took no further notice, lightly saying:
'Yes, the body was photographed, and a couple of the pictures are aboard.'
He again looked at me; then, directing his eyes round the poop, said:
'Do you see that old gentleman sitting in the easy chair near the skylight?'
It was the old gentleman who some days previously had asked Captain Robson at the dinner table what was the action of salt water on a body, to which the north-country skipper had drily answered, 'It drowns.'
'Has that man photographs of the body?' I exclaimed, staring at the old gentleman with nervous tremors running through me, shaking the very voice in my throat, so sudden and unexpected was this.