While this scene was enacting, a similar one was taking place on board the _Dove_.  Her captors, having time to look about them, had taken up the bodies of poor Captain Stone and the other Kanaka, and, without shroud or a shot to their feet, had hove them overboard.  They also were immediately attacked by the sharks.  Jerry and I shuddered, as well we might.  The doctor looked on with more composure.  "It matters little whether sharks or animalculae first devour a body," he observed.  "One or other will inevitably swallow it before long, only the sharks make greater speed with the process.  Happily there is an essence which neither one nor the other can destroy, which survives triumphant over death; so, lads, when you mourn the loss of a friend, think of him as living in that essence, not in the mortal frame you see torn to pieces or mouldering in decay."  A new light seemed to burst on me as the doctor said this.  The idea aided me to get over the horror I had felt at seeing the fate of the missionary captain, and enabled me better to bear the first remark which the pirate leader deigned to make us: "Well, youngsters, if you don't behave yourselves, you'll come to that very quickly, let me tell you."