“He looks dead,” shivered Mr. Saxby, hardly knowing whether he was not dead himself.
They raised Pym’s head, and put a pillow under it. The landlady wrung her hands.
“We must have a doctor,” she cried: “but I can see he is dead. This comes of that quarrel with his captain: I heard them raving frightfully at one another. There has been a scuffle here—see that chair. Oh! and look at my beautiful ivory knocked down!—and the shade all broke to atoms!”
“I’ll fetch Mr. Ferrar,” cried Saxby, feeling himself rather powerless to act; and with nobody to aid him but the gabbling woman.
Like mad, Saxby tore up the street, burst in at Mark Ferrar’s open door and went full butt against Mark himself; who was at the moment turning quickly out of it.
“Take care, Saxby. What are you about?”
“Oh, for Heaven’s sake do come, Mr. Ferrar! Pym is dead. He is lying dead on the floor.”
The first thing Ferrar did was to scan his junior officer narrowly, wondering whether he could be quite sober. Yes, he seemed to be that; but agitated to trembling, and his face as pale as death. The next minute Ferrar was bending over Pym. Alas, he saw too truly that life was extinct.
“It’s his skipper that has done it, sir,” repeated the landlady.
“Hush, Mrs. Richenough!” rebuked Ferrar. “Captain Tanerton has not done this.”