It was very dark now. They could see nothing save the glow of the fire burning furiously over the Poolvash. And only the sharp crackle of the kindling gorse and the deep moan of the distant sea could they hear. They took the low path back to the Lockjaw, where they had left the boats. The body was heavy, their steps were uncertain in the darkness, and their capture seemed imminent. As they passed the mouth of the old pit, Corteen proposed to throw the body into it. Killip assented; but Danny, who had not uttered word or sound until now, cried, "No, no, no." Then they hurried along.
When they reached the Lockjaw they descended to the bay, got into one of the boats, and pushed off. The other boat—the police-boat that Danny had brought from the castle—they pulled into mid-stream, and there sent it adrift. It ran ashore at the next flood tide, two miles further up the shore. When they got clear outside of the two streams that flow round the Head, they were amazed to find the "Ben-my-Chree" bearing down on them in the uncertain light. What had happened was this:
On running down the lamp that was put up on the ruined end of the pier, the two men who had charge of the fishing-boat had lain-to and stayed aboard for some minutes. Davy Cain and Tommy Tear, having effected their purpose ashore, had stolen away from their simple companions, and were standing on the quay. The two couples of men were exchanging words in eager whispers when they heard shouts from the castle. "What's that? Kisseck's voice?" "No." "Something has gone wrong. Let us set sail and away." So they stood out again to sea, passing close by the Castle Rock. They now realized that the voice they had remembered was the voice of Kinvig. That was enough to tell them that mischief had been brewing. They rounded the island and saw the fire over the head of the Lockjaw. They filled away and kept the boat off to her course. Soon they saw the dingey athwart their hawse and pulled to. Corteen and Killip lifted the body of Kisseck into the fishing-boat, and Danny Fayle, all but as silent and rigid, was pulled up after it. As the lad was dragged over the gunwale the pistol dropped from his hand and fell with a splash into the sea. A word of explanation ensued, and once more they were standing out to sea, with their dread freight of horror and crime.
The wind was fresh outside. It was on their starboard quarter as they now made for the north. They saw the fire burning to leeward. It sent a long, red sinuous track of light across the black water that flowed between them and the land. Danny stood forward, never speaking, never spoken to, gazing fixedly at that sinuous track. To his affrighted senses it was as the serpent of guilt that kept trailing behind him.
When they were well away, and the men had time to comprehend in its awful fulness what had occurred, they stood together aft and whispered. They had placed the body of the master by the hatchways, and again and again they turned their heads toward it in the darkness. It was as though the body might even yet stand up in their midst, and any man at any moment might find it face to face with him, eye to eye. The certainty that it was dead had not taken hold of all of them. It still bled, and one of the crew, Quilleash, an old man reputed to possess a charm to stop blood, knelt down beside Kisseck, and whispered in his ear.
"A few good words can do no harm anyway," said Tear, and even Davy Cain was too much aghast to jeer at the superstition.
"Sanguis mane in te, Sicut Christus se," whispered the old man in his native tongue into the deaf ear, and then followed a wild command to the blood to cease flowing in the name of the three godly men who came to Rome—Christ, Peter, and Paul.
The blood stopped indeed. But "Chamarroo as clagh" ("As dead as a stone"), said the old man, looking up.
Danny stood and looked on in silence. His spirit seemed to be gone, as though it could awake to life again only in another world.