The Servians came up with a defiant air. "We loaded it with stones and threw it into the water, so that you might not bury it anywhere ashore and bring bad luck on us."
"Rash men! what have you done? Do you know that I shall be arrested and have to render an account of my vanished passenger? They will accuse me of having put him out of the way. You must give me a certificate in which you acknowledge what you did. Which of you can write?"
Naturally, not one of them knew how to write.
"What! You, Berkics, and you, Jakerics, did you not help me to paint the letters on the coffin?"
Then they came out with a confession that each only knew how to write the one letter which he had painted on the lid, and that, only with the brush and not with a pen.
"Very well; then I shall take you on to Pancsova. There you can give evidence verbally to the colonel in my favor; he will find your tongues for you."
At this threat suddenly every one of them had learned to write; not only those two, but the others as well. They said they would rather give a certificate at once than be taken on to Pancsova. Michael fetched ink, pen, and paper, made one of these skillful scribes lie on his stomach on the deck, and dictated to him the deposition in which they all declared that, out of fear of hail-storms, they had thrown the body of Euthemio Trikaliss into the Danube while the crew slept, and without their knowledge or aid.
"Now, sign your names to it, and where each of you lives, so that you may be easily found if a commission of inquiry is sent to make a report."
One of the witnesses signed himself "Ira Karakassalovics," living at "Gunerovacz," and the other "Nyegro Stiriapicz," living at "Medvelincz."
And now they took leave of each other with the most serious faces in the world, without either Michael or the four others allowing it to be seen what trouble it cost them not to laugh in each other's faces.