The rope dropped upon the pebbles—cut to a single strand.
Bayard was with difficulty persuaded to release his rigid clutch from the shoulder of the fisherman, who fell in a shapeless mass at his preserver’s feet. The light of the tar fire flared on the man’s bloated face. It was Job Slip.
“Where’s the other?” asked Bayard faintly. “There were two.”
He dimly saw through streams of water, that something else had happened; that men were running over the rocks and collecting in a cleft, and stooping down to look, and that most of them turned away as soon as they had looked.
The old woman’s was the only quiet figure of them all. She had not left her place upon the cliff, but stood bent and stiff, staring straight ahead. He thought he heard a girl’s voice say:—
“Hush! Don’t talk so loud. She doesn’t know—it’s Johnny; and he’s been battered to jelly on the rocks.”
“Mr. Bayard, sir,” said Job, who had crawled up and got as far as his knees, “I wasn’t wuth it.”
“That’s so,” said a candid bystander with an oath.