Hayden had arrayed her in the dress in which she had been wed and then sewn her into a cocoon of sail cloth. He paused then to weep the most bitter tears of his life. She appeared so very small when they bore her up to the deck, as though whatever had made up Angelita in life had already fled.
The officers and crew gathered on the quarterdeck, where Smosh spoke in his deep, sonorous voice. His words, as kind and profound as they might have been, seemed nothing more than bits of air to Hayden. They hardly registered.
The day appeared somehow imbued with solemn beauty, the sea of tropical blue spreading out to the south, a little whisper of wind, and hardly a cloud to sully the sky. Gulls ranged about the ship, mewling sorrowfully.
What occurred seemed somehow impossible to Hayden, and he had difficulty believing that he attended the funeral of his young wife, who but a few weeks before had been vibrant to the point of overflowing with the life she had been given.
The voice of Mr Smosh penetrated Hayden’s numbed mind, and the final words registered.
“We therefore commit her body to the deep,” he said, “to be turned into corruption, looking for the resurrection of the body when the sea shall give up her dead . . .”
They slipped her into the endless depths and condolences were again offered, until Hayden found himself alone on the quarterdeck. For a long time he stood at the rail, his mind in a whirl of strange emptiness. He could not give the order to make sail, to leave her there alone, sinking slowly down to the ooze and the darkness.
But he could not keep his ship there forever, and finally, he ordered sail to be made and their course shaped for Barbados. He went down to his cabin then and sat quietly by himself, listening for the sound of his own heart beating, for the tiny murmur within that he would bear with him until his heart could speak no more.