From this dream I was roused by the loud tread of men's feet over my head, as if the individuals were bearing a load that increased the heaviness of their steps. I was at no loss for the cause--they were carrying the coffin with the body in it to midship, where it was to be let down into its watery grave. In a short time afterwards, a gurgling of the waters met my ear, and, struggling to the foot of the companion ladder, I would have rushed upon deck if my strength would have permitted; but I fell upon the steps, and, lying there, heard a cry from some of them. I gathered, from the detached words I heard, that the bottom of the coffin had given way, from its insufficiency and the weight that had been put in it to make it sink; and that the body had gone down, while the chest swam on the surface. Several feet were now heard rapidly in motion, and the voice of Kreutz, who was running aft, fell on my ear.
'Teufel!' I heard him say, 'we shall have that grim corpse when the gallenblase--ha!--ha!--the gall bladder has burst, rising like von geist from the bottom of the deep sea, and staring at us. Hell take the stumper, Murdoch!'
These words, uttered by the German, were followed by some expression from Crawley, no part of which I could make out, except the oaths directed against the carpenter. The sounds died away; but I heard enough to satisfy me of the fact that George's body had been consigned to the deep with only the shroud to defend it against the attacks of the ravenous creatures I had been contemplating. My mind was again forced, and with increased energy, into the train of gloomy meditations suggested by what I had heard; and so vivid were the visions that obeyed the excited powers of my imagination, that I forgot, as I lay brooding over them on the sofa to which I had staggered, the danger that next awaited myself. I could not now look at the sea, for I feared to meet the fact which would add probation to my imaginations--that the animals I had seen there had disappeared to crowd round the prey that had been given to them. Yet the actual vision of that dear form, mutilated, torn, and devoured, could not, I am satisfied, have produced more insufferable agony, than accompanied and resulted from the diseased imaginings in which my fancy was engaged. The process that I pictured going on in the bottom of the sea, was coloured by hues so sickly, and attended by circumstances so distorted and grim, that all natural appearances, however harrowing, must have fallen short of the power they exercised over me. The positions in which I imagined him to be placed, were varied in a greater degree than ever I had seen the human body; the expressions of the countenance, though fixed by death, and not likely to be changed, became as Protean as the changing postures of the limbs; and the marine monsters that gambolled or fought around him for the prize, were invested with forms, colours, and attributes, of a kind not limited to what I had ever seen in the deep. The only idea that seemed to remain stationary, and not liable to the mutations into which all the others were every moment gliding, was the colour of the body, which was that of the green medium in which he lay. That sickly hue pervaded all parts; and even the dark or light colours of the inhabitants of the deep, partook, more or less, of the prevailing tint. It seemed to be the universal of all particulars, as time or space is the medium or condition of existence of all thought and matter; I felt the impossibility of any idea being true that did not partake of it; and, so strongly was the feeling of the ex-natural that accompanied it, that even now I cannot look at anything green without shuddering.