"The—longboat," said Captain Jenks, and got laboriously to his feet, massive arms swinging, quite helpless.
Mr. Eames ignored him. "Three men were in it, Mr. Kenny, rather two men and a boy, the boy's name being Bartram Wilks, of Dedham, a lad of about sixteen years...."
"I remember him. Will you continue?"
"All three were wounded and famished, the Lord having seen fit to visit them with the vials of his wrath. The boy Wilks and one of the men were brought aboard. The other man—the sea running high and as God disposeth—burst his head against the strakes and sank immediate. The man brought aboard perished later, having overeaten though suffering from pistol wounds, but the boy Wilks lived two days."
His gaze not once abandoning Mr. Eames, Daniel Shawn had taken from his pocket a bright copper coin and was rubbing his broad thumb across it, turning it deftly to rub the other side, an action evidently so habitual it needed no guidance of his eyes. A farthing, Reuben thought, but not colonial. When for a moment the thumb and forefinger held the coin motionless by the finely milled rim, Reuben could make out a robed figure kneeling by a floating crown, and the legend FLOREAT REX. The pale eyes of Simon Eames were caught by the brightness and he let the silence drag. Shawn asked of no one in particular: "Had Mr. Dyckman wife and children?"
"Eh?" Mr. Kenny turned to him, startled. "He had, sir. A wife and two little girls survive him."
"Oh, hanging's too gentle," said Shawn, rubbing the coin, his eyelids lowered on a blueness like that of two bright mirrors turned to a blue sky. "Is there a blacker thing than murder in the Decalogue? Isn't it the destroying of the one thing we know we possess? Forgive me, sir—I should not be talking, belike I should not be here in your time of trouble, but I—sir, I feel it. I can't explain—steady as she goes, can I not! for didn't I see a friend murdered in a knife brawl on the brig Terschelling, and for nothing, a thing done in the time it'd take you to breathe twice, the time it took me, sir, to run from companionway to la'board rail and no chance, no chance to aid him at all, and then his blood blackening in the deck seams hour by hour, the way no holystone would ever rub it out?" Mr. Shawn seemed blankly startled to discover the farthing in his fingers, and put it away. "Mr. Kenny, they're saying about the docks that the poor soul was yet living when he was found. Could he not speak at all, to damn the man who'd done the thing?"
"Little enough," said Mr. Kenny slowly. "Little enough, Mr. Shawn.... Will you continue, Mr. Eames?"
"Ha? Oh.... I believe I was about to say, Wilks lived two days, and then died of an infection of his wounds, cutlass wounds, though Captain Bart tended the boy in his own cabin, bled him, did whatever he might, but—having lived long enough on this wretched earth to give Captain Bart the tidings and to prepare his soul for its going unto the Father of all mercies, the boy died, being a lad of decent conversation evidently raised in fear of the Lord, for Captain Bart saith he did make a most touching confession of faith, indeed exemplary, and may have been of the elect, we may hope...."
"Will you continue?"