“First officer, Boston to Shanghai, third voyage,” answered Buel Vanton in his hard, uninflected tones. “Triced up by the thumbs and flogged before the crew by Captain Hawkins’s orders. First officer, too! Insulted Mrs. Hawkins.”
Keturah Smiley’s face settled into its severest lines.
“You’re likely mistaken,” she said with a bite in her words. “Captain Hawkins would never have flogged a man for that: he’d have killed him!”
“Did almost. Killing too easy. Better to flog. Torture,” declared Buel Vanton, reflectively. “Afterward Captain King. Knew him in San Francisco. Retired. Devil. Swore he’d get even. Then Captain Hawkins died. King heard of it. Near crazy. I’ve come to tell you he’s dead!”
“Dead?” echoed Keturah Smiley, who had become slightly confused by the visitor’s elliptical language. “Captain Hawkins is dead. Of course he’s dead, what of it?”
“Not Hawkins, King!” barked Captain Vanton from his impassive face framed in the spreading sidewhiskers. “He’s done you all the harm he ever will. All of you. He’s dead. ‘The King is dead. Long live the King!”’ He uttered a harsh sound, a bitter laugh. Turning squarely about he started off the porch and away from the house. Keturah Smiley, who had been eyeing him with amazement, suddenly called after him, “How do you know he’s dead?”
Captain Vanton half turned his head.
“Killed him myself,” he declared abruptly, and lurched away.
IV
Standing well back in the hall Mermaid had heard this extraordinary conversation. Now she slipped into the front parlour ahead of Miss Smiley, who stood, apparently forgetful or stunned, for two or three minutes in the open doorway. Then she closed the door with a bang, entered the front parlour, and went through it into the living room. She stood before the stove a moment, warming her hands. Her face was working and her mouth was twisting, but her lips remained closed. Mermaid looked at her with deep sympathy and with a certain terror at the memory of what she had just heard. Neither emotion drowned the awful curiosity within the girl to know what it had all been about. But she dared not ask questions.