Fooling the worms

Convict gravedigger Mark Jeffrey was, and still is, a very unpleasant character though his comments about the worms were 
unintentionally funny. Mark spent most of his days alone among the headstones on the horrific Isle of the Dead off Port Arthur. After claiming he saw the Devil one night, Mark was relieved of his caretaking duties.

So you think my face is grim? So would yours be if you had the life I had. Being the gravedigger on the Isle of Dead was no picnic.

The only thing I ever received for such a rotten job was the odd shot of rum and no-one knew I had an extra bottle hidden amongst the graves.

This I did to keep out the chills as it could be dastardly cold on the isle.

Try digging a grave when the ground is frozen and you will soon see what I mean.

You say I claimed to have seen the Devil. Well, there was no claim about it­—I did see him.There was a time I saw his very likeness staring at me through a window, but that wasn’t the only time I saw him.

One evening I had a grave to dig for a burial next morning, and up and out of the ground rose the Devil himself as I was halfway through digging.

I let out a bellow loud enough to waken the dead. The only thing I could do was run like hell, but in doing so I had forgotten a previous grave I had dug and down I went smack into the hole.

It scared the living daylights out of me and I swore off rum for good except, at that time, I needed a lot to steady my nerves.

The bottle I had hidden could not be found. After digging around and searching in the half dark I had to give up.

I really did dig my own grave, as this was the only way I could be sure of being buried deep enough.

You see, what you might not know, is that worms don’t go very far underground, only a few feet, so if you dig a grave deep enough the worms won’t get you.

In physical life I didn’t get away with much and I wasn’t a very nice sort of person, but I fooled those worms.