Chapter 29 - Page 2

literature, and dropped the book overboard as worthless. Doubtless,
it met the fate of many other ponderous tomes; sinking quickly and
profoundly. What Camden or Stowe hereafter will dive for it?

One evening Samoa brought me a quarto half-sheet of yellowish, ribbed
paper, much soiled and tarry, which he had discovered in a dark hole
of the forecastle. It had plainly formed part of the lost log; but
all the writing thereon, at present decipherable, conveyed no
information upon the subject then nearest my heart.

But one could not but be struck by a tragical occurrence, which the
page very briefly recounted; as well, as by a noteworthy pictorial
illustration of the event in the margin of the text. Save the cut,
there was no further allusion to the matter than the following:--
"This day, being calm, Tooboi, one of the Lahina men, went overboard
for a bath, and was eaten up by a shark. Immediately sent forward
for his bag."

Now, this last sentence was susceptible of two meanings. It is truth,
that immediately upon the decease of a friendless sailor at sea, his
shipmates oftentimes seize upon his effects, and divide them; though
the dead man's clothes are seldom worn till a subsequent voyage. This
proceeding seems heartless. But sailors reason thus: Better we, than
the captain. For by law, either scribbled or unscribbled, the effects
of a mariner, dying on shipboard, should be held in trust by that
officer. But as sailors are mostly foundlings and castaways, and
carry all their kith and kin in their arms and their legs, there
hardly ever appears any heir-at-law to claim their estate; seldom
worth inheriting, like Esterhazy's. Wherefore, the withdrawal of a
dead man's "kit" from the forecastle to the cabin, is often held
tantamount to its virtual appropriation by the captain. At any rate,
in small ships on long voyages, such things have been done.

Thus much being said, then, the sentence above quoted from the
Parki's log, may be deemed somewhat ambiguous. At the time it struck
me as singular; for the poor diver's grass bag could not have
contained much of any thing valuable unless, peradventure, he had
concealed therein some Cleopatra pearls, feloniously abstracted from
the shells brought up from the sea.

Aside of the paragraph, copied above, was a pen-and-ink sketch of the
casualty, most cruelly executed; the poor fellow's legs being
represented half way in the process of deglutition; his arms firmly
grasping the monster's teeth, as if heroically bent upon making as
tough a morsel of himself as possible.

But no doubt the honest captain sketched this cenotaph to the
departed in all sincerity of heart; perhaps, during the
melancholy leisure which followed