Indeed these were all busy enough attending to the interment of the great ones of Venice.

In that churchyard alone they saw six buryings in progress.

Also after the priest had read his hurried Office, as they left the gates, whence Lady Carleon's bearers had already fled affrighted, they met more melancholy processions heralded by a torch or two whereof the light fell upon some sheeted and uncoffined form.
"'Twixt earthquake and plague Murgh the Helper is helping very well," said Grey Dick grimly, and Hugh only groaned in answer.
Such was the beginning of the awful plague which travelled from the East to Venice and all Europe and afterward became known by the name of the Black Death.

Day by day the number of its victims increased; the hundreds of yesterday were the thousands of the morrow.

Soon the graveyards were full, the plague pits, long and deep, were full, and the dead were taken out to sea by shiploads and there cast into the ocean.
At length even this could not be done, since none were forthcoming who would dare the task.