Chapter 48 - Page 2

the silent horror of all, two threads of greenish fire, like a
forked tongue, darted out between the lips; and in a moment, the
cadaverous face was crawled over by a swarm of wormlike flames.

The lamp dropped from the hand of Max, and went out; while covered all
over with spires and sparkles of flame, that faintly crackled in the
silence, the uncovered parts of the body burned before us, precisely
like phosphorescent shark in a midnight sea.

The eyes were open and fixed; the mouth was curled like a scroll, and
every lean feature firm as in life; while the whole face, now wound in
curls of soft blue flame, wore an aspect of grim defiance, and eternal
death. Prometheus, blasted by fire on the rock.

One arm, its red shirt-sleeve rolled up, exposed the man's name,
tattooed in vermilion, near the hollow of the middle joint; and as if
there was something peculiar in the painted flesh, every vibrating
letter burned so white, that you might read the flaming name in the
flickering ground of blue.

"Where's that d--d Miguel?" was now shouted down among us from the
scuttle by the mate, who had just come on deck, and was determined to
have every man up that belonged to his watch.

"He's gone to the harbor where they never weigh anchor," coughed
Jackson. "Come you down, sir, and look."

Thinking that Jackson intended to beard him, the mate sprang down in a
rage; but recoiled at the burning body as if he had been shot by a
bullet. "My God!" he cried, and stood holding fast to the ladder.

"Take hold of it," said Jackson, at last, to the Greenlander; "it must
go overboard. Don't stand shaking there, like a dog; take hold of it, I
say! But stop"--and smothering it all in the blankets, he pulled it
partly out of the bunk.

A few minutes more, and it fell with a bubble among the phosphorescent
sparkles of the damp night sea, leaving a coruscating wake as it sank.

This event thrilled me through and through with unspeakable horror; nor
did the conversation of the watch during the next four hours on deck at
all serve to soothe me.

But what most astonished me, and seemed most incredible, was the
infernal opinion of Jackson, that the man had been actually dead when
brought on board the ship; and that knowingly, and merely for the sake
of the month's advance, paid into his hand upon the strength of the bill
he presented, the body-snatching crimp had knowingly shipped a corpse on
board of the Highlander, under the pretense of its being a live body in
a drunken trance. And I heard Jackson say, that he had known of such
things having been done before. But that a really dead body ever burned
in that manner, I can not even yet