"Yes," said Peters. "He's passed out, right enough. Leastways from here. Passed out, and on. And quite easy too. Look at these slits—would you?"
The diving suit had been laid open like a stripped pelt with long cuts of a keen blade, one down the middle of the back, one across the shoulders, and others connected along the inside of each limb to the wrists and ankles.
"Gone!"
"Gone," confirmed Peters. "Whether the niggers dug him from it piece by piece like the kernel from a nut or whether that friend of his helped him to shed complete—you can take your choice. In either case he's gone—and gone this time to stay."
"There's no—no blood!" gasped Jeckol. "Anyhow!"
Cap'n Bartlet had removed his hat to polish his shiny forehead with the colorful kerchief, and he was looking out of the door over the tops of the trees to the far blue and nameless mountains of Papua, with an eye at peace.
"You could always bank on the luck of James O'Shaughnessy Albro," he said simply. "I knew he was alive."
But Jeckol was still reeling.
"I shan't write this yarn," he assured us earnestly.