"Why," asked Giorgio, "do you not place him in the shade, in one of the houses, on a bed?"
"He is not to be moved," declared the man on guard, "until they hold the inquest."
"At least carry him into the shade, down there, below the embankment!"
Stubbornly the man reiterated, "He is not to be moved."
There could be no sadder sight than that frail, lifeless little being, extended on the stones, and watched over by the impassive brute who repeated his account every time in the selfsame words, and every time made the selfsame gesture, throwing a pebble into the sea:--
"There; only to there."
A woman joined the group, a hook-nosed termagant, with gray eyes and sour lips, mother of the dead boy's comrade. She manifested plainly a mistrustful restlessness, as if she anticipated some accusation against her own son. She spoke with bitterness, and seemed almost to bear a grudge against the victim.
"It was his destiny. God had said to him, 'Go into the sea and end yourself.'"
She gesticulated with vehemence. "What did he go in for, if he did not know how to swim--?"
A young lad, a stranger in the district, the son of a mariner, repeated contemptuously, "Yes, what did he go in for? We, yes, who know how to swim--" ...