For hours his contorted and hideous features lay grinning back at those in the stern of the little boat, until Jane Porter could endure the sight no longer. “Can you not drop his body overboard, William?” she asked.
Clayton rose and staggered toward the corpse. The two remaining sailors eyed him with a strange, baleful light in their sunken orbs. Futilely the Englishman tried to lift the corpse over the side of the boat, but his strength was not equal to the task.
“Lend me a hand here, please,” he said to Wilson, who lay nearest him.
“Wot do you want to throw ’im over for?” questioned the sailor, in a querulous voice.
“We’ve got to before we’re too weak to do it,” replied Clayton. “He’d be awful by tomorrow, after a day under that broiling sun.”
“Better leave well enough alone,” grumbled Wilson. “We may need him before tomorrow.”
Slowly the meaning of the man’s words percolated into Clayton’s understanding. At last he realized the fellow’s reason for objecting to the disposal of the dead man.
“God!” whispered Clayton, in a horrified tone. “You don’t mean—”
“W’y not?” growled Wilson. “Ain’t we gotta live? He’s dead,” he added, jerking his thumb in the direction of the corpse. “He won’t care.”
“Come here, Thuran,” said Clayton, turning toward the Russian. “We’ll have something worse than death aboard us if we don’t get rid of this body before dark.”