"What of him?" demanded the captain.
"He's not dead! He's not dead!" yelled the man.
"All right! all right!" said the captain. "Will he live to hang?"
"But he ain't there at all, sir!" shouted the sailor.
"Not there?" cried the captain.
"No, sir, he's gone, and there's no signs of him anywheres."
So they had not even shot the sexton, for as soon as the captain came out of the cabin door he saw that the body had gone, true enough. Mipps, indeed, who had not been touched by the three bullets, had bided an opportunity and let himself quietly over the side away from the cutter, and struck out through the water with a stronger and quicker stroke than any one would credit such an ancient man to possess.
They searched for him to no avail, and they searched for the mulatto's body to no avail, and the horrible corpse of Doctor Syn was buried that night at sea by the captain's orders, sewn up in a sail with a shot at his feet, so his song came back to him for an epitaph:
"A pound of gunshot was tied to his feet;
And a ragged bit of sail was his winding sheet."
