"And would you please tell me why my company suddenly isn't good enough for you. This sudden silence is a bilgy way to treat somebody who's sworn himself to see that you make the best first voyage that a man could have. Why, I think ..."
"When did you kill a man?" Geo suddenly turned.
The giant stood still, his hands twisting into double knots of bone and muscle. Then they opened. "Maybe it was a year ago," he said softly. "And maybe it was a year, two months, and five days, on a Thursday morning at eight o'clock in the brig of a heaving ship. Which would make it about five days and ten hours."
"How could you kill a man?" Geo asked. "How could you go for a year and not tell me about it, and then admit it to a stranger just like that? You were my friend, we've slept under the same blanket, drank from the same wineskin. But what sort of a person are you?"
"And what sort of a person are you?" said the giant. "A nosy bastard that I'd break in seven pieces if ..." he heaved in a breadth. "If I hadn't promised I'd make no trouble. I've never broken a promise to anyone, alive or dead." The fists formed, relaxed again.
Suddenly he raised one hand, flung it away, and spat on the floor. Then he turned toward the steps to the door.
Then the noise hit them. They both turned toward Snake. The boy's black eyes darted under twin spots of light from the lamp, to Urson, to Geo, then back.
The noise came again, quieter this time, and recognizable as the word Help, only it was no sound, but like the fading hum of a tuning fork inside their skulls, immediate, yet fuzzy.
... You ... help ... me ... together ... came the words once more, indistinct and blurring into one another.
"Hey," Urson said, "is that you?"