“No! What are your reasons for doubting it?”
“Why, if it had been a woman eyther fallin’ over or flung, she’d a gied tongue a second time—aye, a good many times—’fore getting silenced. It must a been into the water; an’ people don’t drown at the first goin’ down. She’d a riz to the surface once, if not twice; an’ screeched sure. We couldn’t a helped hearin’ it. Ye remember, Captain, ’twor dead calm for a spell, just precedin’ the thunderstorm. When that cry come ye might a heerd the leap o’ a trout a quarter mile off. But it worn’t repeated—not so much as a mutter.”
“Quite true. But what do you conclude from its not having been?”
“That she who gied the shriek wor in the grasp o’ somebody when she did it, an’ wor silenced instant by bein’ choked or smothered; same as they say’s done by them scoundrels called garotters.”
“You said nothing of this at the inquest?”
“No, I didn’t; for several reasons. One, I wor so took by surprise, just home, an’ hearin’ what had happened. Besides, the crowner didn’t question me on my feelins—only about the facts o’ the case. I answered all his questions, clear as I could remember, an’ far’s I then understood things. But not as I understand them now.”
“Ah! You have learnt something since?”
“Not a thing, Captain. Only what I’ve been thinkin’ o’—by rememberin’ a circumstance I’d forgot.”
“What?”
“Well; whiles I wor sittin’ in the skiff that night, waitin’ for you to come, I heerd a sound different from the hootin’ o’ them owls.”