Clementine.
Dear God, now I am also guilty——
Bos.
[Angrily.] Guilty? Guilty! Have the novels you read gone to your head? Guilty! Are you possessed, to use those words after such an accident?
Clementine.
He said that the ship was a floating coffin. Then I heard you say that in any case it would be the last voyage for the Hope.
Bos.
[Angrily at first.] That damned boarding school; those damned boarding school fads! Walk if you like through the village like a fool, sketching the first rascal or beggar you meet! But don’t blab out things you can be held to account for. A floating coffin! Say, rather, a drunken authority—The North, of Pieterse, and the Surprise and the Willem III and the Young John. I can keep on naming them. Half of the fishing fleet and half the merchant fleet are floating coffins. Did you hear that, Kaps?
Kaps.
[Timidly.] No, Meneer, I don’t hear anything.