“Anything by-ordinar dirty?” he asked, and in my humility I did not have the spirit to resent what that tone and query implied.
“Dirty enough,” said I, “the man's dead,” and Horn's face cleared.
“Oh, faith! is that all?” quo' he, “I was thinkin' it might be coinin'—beggin' your pardon, Mr. Greig, or somethin' in the fancy way. But a gentleman's quarrel ower the cartes or a wench—that's a different tale. I hate homicide mysel' to tell the truth, but whiles I've had it in my heart, and in a way o' speakin* Dan Risk this meenute has my gully-knife in his ribs.”
As he spoke the vessel, mishandled, or a traitor to her helm, now that she was all awash internally with water, yawed and staggered in the wind. The sails shivered, the yards swung violently, appalling noises came from the hold. At once the pumping ceased, and Risk's voice roared in the confusion, ordering the launch of the Kirkcaldy boat.
CHAPTER XII
MAKES PLAIN THE DEEPEST VILLAINY OF RISK AND SETS ME ON A FRENCHMAN
When I come to write these affairs down after the lapse of years, I find my memory but poorly retains the details of that terrific period between the cry of Risk and the moment when Horn and I, abandoned on the doomed vessel, watched the evening fall upon the long Kirkcaldy boat, her mast stepped, but her sails down, hovering near us for the guarantee of our eternal silence regarding the crime the men on her were there and then committing. There is a space—it must have been brief, but I lived a lifetime in it—whose impressions rest with me, blurred, but with the general hue of agony. I can see the sun again sailing overhead in the arching sky of blue; the enormous ocean, cruel, cold, spread out to the line of the horizon; the flapping sails and drumming reef-points, the streaming halliards and clew-garnets, the spray buffeting upon our hull and spitting in our faces like an enemy; I hear the tumult of the seamen hurrying vulgarly to save their wretched lives, the gluck of waters in the bowels of the ship, the thud of cargo loose and drifting under decks.
But I see and hear it all as in a dream or play, and myself someway standing only a spectator.