“I don’t care,” cried George doggedly, “What’s hanging to it or who! I won’t stay here by myself—that’s straight!”
“Oh, confound you!” exclaimed the Sergeant. “All right if you’re such a coward as that I’ll send someone down as soon as I go up to the barracks!”
“I ain’t a coward,” said George; “but I haven’t engaged with the owners of this boat to mind floating corpses. It ain’t part of my duty, and I won’t do it.”
“Remember you are to be a witness—an important witness—in this case,” said the Sergeant, severely.
“All right,” replied George; “but I’ll wait ashore up under the lamp, till somebody comes, I wouldn’t stop on the boat—and another thing, I’m hanged if I think I’ll sleep aboard of her after this!”
Whereat George stepped on to the gangplank and got ashore, so placing himself when he landed that various opaque objects would come between his line of vision and the stern of the steamer.
Tom Pagdin sat on the edge of the bed in Jacob Cayley’s farmhouse and thought hard.
Once he got up and tried the door very gently.
It was firmly locked.