A Burial at Sea

cabin: it was time to inspect this medallion once and for all.

To his astonishment, however, his desk was empty. The medallion was gone.

“McEwan!” he shouted.

The steward lumbered in, not surprisingly working a bit of food in his jaw. The whole cabin smelled like cinnamon toast, and Lenox felt a pang of hunger in his stomach.

“Did you take away the basin that was on my desk?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Then you have the medallion that I was cleaning? The one that was in the basin?”

“No, sir. The basin was empty—even the water had been thrown out the porthole, sir.”

“The porthole was open?”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox felt sick—how amateurish of him to be distracted from a tangible clue. No doubt the water and the medallion had been splashed through the porthole together. By the murderer.

“Lord.”

McEwan looked confused. “I figgered you’d come back and took it away, so I cleaned the basin.”

“This damn naval obsession with cleaning. Listen to me now: Did you look at the medallion, when I left it here earlier? I know you must have been in to sweep.”

McEwan gulped. “No.”

“Deal honestly with me and I won’t be angry.” Lenox paused. “I’m sorry to have spoken sharply, but it’s important.”

“Well, I may have glanced at it, is all, sir, to make sure it didn’t need … cleaning, or polishing, I suppose, the way things do, which is only right,” he concluded, rather lamely.

“Yes, I’m sure. Tell me, then—what did it say?”

“It was a medal given out for service in the Second Opium War. On the front was a picture of the HMS Chesapeake as well as the date, and on the back was the name of the midshipman who received it. And a very little nipper he must have been, too, not past ten or eleven.”

“Who was it?”

“Lieutenant Carrow, sir.”

“Carrow!”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox went deep into thought for a moment, as McEwan looked anxiously on.

Something strange was happening now; inside and near the body of a murdered lieutenant had been objects that belonged to two of his fellow officers, both presumably stolen, neither there, it would seem, for any particular reason. After all, another knife would have killed Halifax just as well, and in all probability with more efficiency. As for the medallion, it wouldn’t have been torn from Carrow’s breast in a struggle—Lenox’s first thought—because he wouldn’t have worn it on deck.

He would have to have a word with Carrow, to be sure.

“Interesting,” Lenox said at length. “Well, keep it to yourself, please, no talk of it to that Evers chap.”

“No, sir.”

“And don’t look at my things again, please. I know it’s your job to tidy my cabin, but there must be some proper expectation of privacy.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lenox paused. “Incidentally, could you go to the galley and sort me out a piece of that cinnamon toast? And maybe a cup of that Chinese tea I brought, the dark stuff?”

“Oh, of course, sir.”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The body of Lieutenant Thomas St. James Halifax having been thoroughly examined and, of course, confirmed dead, that night the men of the Lucy made preparation for its burial at sea.

As the hour of the ceremony marched closer—all men on board knew from their superiors, down to the purser’s third assistant, that it was to be at half past five—a deep melancholy took hold of the ship. The men were quiet in their preparations. Lenox observed them, two sailors letting the starboard gangway out, a group of others clearing the main deck and furling the mainmast’s sails tight around it, four more bringing a long mess table onto the deck and setting it beside the open gangway.

Martin himself supervised them, and also ordered the sails set in counterpoise to each other, so that the ship would be as perfectly still as possible. Then he called out, “Top gallant yards, acock bill,” an order that sent men scurrying up the rigging.

As soon as the gangway was folded out and the Lucy was as near motionless as the rocking of the ocean would permit, men began to head below deck, the officers, the warrant officers, the midshipmen, the bluejackets, the marines, all in a great drove, to change into their best dress.

Lenox, already in a black suit, stayed above, and found himself nearly the only person there.

Downstairs, he knew from Tradescant, the sailmaker was sewing Halifax’s body into a snow-white sheet, with two cannonballs at his feet to weigh him down. The last stitch would go through his nose, by old naval custom, as a final confirmation that he was dead.

At five fifteen the men began to assemble on deck in long, tidy rows, all dressed in their white duck trousers, blue shirts, and blue caps. Usually a gathering of this variety on ship was loud, but nobody spoke now. Then the officers came on board; each, Lenox saw, was carrying a white flower.

“You will stand with us, Mr. Lenox?” said Martin, coming up from behind him with his tricorn hat tucked under his arm.

“I should be honored.”

When several minutes later they were all assembled and the body in its white sailcloth had been hauled onto the deck and laid out on the long mess table, the bosun—a sort of head sailor, in charge of various small crews of seamen, generally the soundest naval mind at a captain’s disposal—piped, and then called out “Ship’s company, off hats!” in a loud voice that seemed to carry unnaturally in that great void of ocean.

The men removed their hats.

The chaplain stepped forward before the men and began to speak. In their short acquaintance he had been a figure of fun, of comedy, to Lenox, but in his vestments now he looked terribly grave, and his booming voice seemed free of the slur it took when he drank spirits.

“We come here today to bury at sea a good and God-fearing man, Lieutenant Thomas Halifax. May he rest in peace.

“I shall read from the book of Job, and from the book of John.” The chaplain sighed heavily, and then spoke. “‘He brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’”

“Blessed be the name of the Lord,” the ship’s company chanted back.

The chaplain went on. “‘I am the resurrection and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ Amen.”

“Amen.”

Now the chaplain began to read from Lamentations, following them with two psalms, the thirtieth and the ninetieth. Lenox listened to them more as music than as words, and found himself staring into the soft golden twilight, the birds wheeling through it, the ocean mapping the light, the sky clear and more white than blue. A great hollow feeling came into his chest, almost like tears, of something inarticulate and enormous, something he only vaguely understood.

The chaplain finished and motioned the four remaining lieutenants, Billings, Carrow, Lee, and Mitchell, forward. Each took one corner of the mess table upon which Halifax, sewn into his sail, was laid. As the chaplain spoke again they walked the table down the starboard gangway and slowly, agonizingly slowly, began to tip the body into the sea.

“We therefore commit the body of our brother and shipmate Thomas Halifax to the deep, looking for general