"He is dead enough," he announced, eyeing Lanyard morosely—"beyond helping…. Look here; are you with me or against me?"
"Need you ask?"
"I count on you, then. Good. I think we can cover this up."
He checked and stood for a while lost in thought.
"How?" Lanyard roused him.
"Simply enough: I go on deck, send the watch ashore on some trumped-up errand. They suspect nothing, thinking the commander and I have you in charge. If they heard that shot, I will say one of us dropped a bottle of champagne, and it exploded…. When they are gone, I bring the dory alongside; and with your help it should be an easy matter to carry this body up, weight it, row it out to the middle of the lagoon, dump it overboard. Then we return. Our story is, the commander followed the anchor watch ashore; if later he wandered off, got lost in the woods in his alcoholic delirium, that is no affair of ours. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly," said Lanyard with a look of fatuous innocence. "But how about the water—is it deep enough?"
The Prussian took no pains to dissemble his scorn of this question, seemingly so witless. "To cover the body? Why, even here there is sufficient depth at low tide for us to submerge completely, barring the periscopes. And it is deeper yet in the middle."
"Thanks," Lanyard replied meekly.
"Have another drink? No?" The Prussian tossed off a half cupful of undiluted brandy, and shuddered. "Then stop here. I'll be back in a—"