"Basta!" (avast) "I see that you do understand," he resumed; "and now begin by obedience. Throw this carrion—this bestia muerta—overboard."
But perceiving how we all shrunk back,—
"Overboard with him," he added, brutally kicking the inanimate body of poor Will White; "or demonio, I shall send the first who disobeys me to keep him company!"
He grasped me by the arm, his hateful clutch was firm as a smith's vice; and then he levelled his pistol at the head of Ned Carlton.
For a moment the latter stood irresolute, and then seeing the black muzzle of the revolver within a foot of his head, he muttered a deep malediction, stamped his foot with rage on the deck, and said,—
"Mr. Rodney, bear a hand with me to launch this murdered man,—this poor fellow overboard!"
"Obey!" thundered Antonio.
Like one in a dream I bent over the dead man, on whose pale face, glazed eyes, and relaxed jaw, the bright moonlight was shining, and in my excitement and bewilderment, I nearly slipped and fell in the pool of blood which flowed from his death wound.
I had never touched a corpse before, and an irrepressible shudder ran through all my veins. But that emotion once over, I could have handled a dozen, with perhaps indifference; and there are few who, after touching the dead, have not experienced this change of feeling.
Ned Carlton, with a sound like a sob in his honest breast—a sob of mingled rage and commiseration—raised the yet warm body; I took the feet, and through one of the quarter-boards, which was open, we launched it into the great deep, and as the brig flew on, rolling before the early morning wind, there remained no trace of poor Will White but his blood, a dark pool upon the deck; and the crew stood staring at it and at each other with blank irresolution, horror, and dismay expressed in all their faces.