"I get everything ready to board, but the steamer pays no attention. They go straight ahead. Maybe they think it's just natives, but at any rate they don't put about or anything. I go to the edge of the water and shout to them. I go into it up to my waist and whistle and snap my fingers and call to it, as I would to a dog, but they pay no attention. And then I give up.
"'I 'm sorry, McCarthy,' Janssen says.
"'What are you sorry for?' I asks her. 'You ought to be glad.'
"'I am glad,' she says. 'I 'm glad for myself, but I 'm sorry for your sake, McCarthy. I 'm really sorry.'
"One night we 're setting by the fire in the moonlight, and I 'm trying to figure out how the natives build their huts, because I want to build one for Janssen. There 's a queer sort of rain in these islands. Sometimes in a bright sky a cloud will pass, very high, very quick, and the rain comes down like bullets. You can hear it thunder in the leaves, and rattle over the sea like pistol shots. And it's not so pleasant after a while. It's over in a minute or so, but Janssen ought to have some place when it comes.
"And Janssen is sitting there as quiet as anything, making figures in the sand and saying nothing. She turns to me.
"'McCarthy,' she says, 'did I really kill Alec de Vries?'
"'You killed him dead.'
"'It seems like a dream to me, a bad dream in the night.'
"'If you had waited and looked at that corpse, you 'd have known it was no dream.'