“And what was it you saw in the boat, Achanna?”
“The death of a man.”
“So—. And now” (this after a prolonged silence, wherein the four men stood facing each other, “is it a blood-matter if not of peace?”
“Ay. Go, if you are wise. If not, ’tis your own death you will be making.”
There was a flash as of summer lightning. A bluish flame seemed to leap through the moonshine. Marcus reeled, with a gasping cry; then, leaning back, till his face blenched in the moonlight, his knees gave way. As he fell, he turned half round. The long knife which Mànus had hurled at him had not penetrated his breast more than an inch at most, but as he fell on the deck it was driven into him up to the hilt.
In the blank silence that followed, the three men could hear a sound like the ebb-tide in sea-weed. It was the gurgling of the bloody froth in the lungs of the dead man.
The first to speak was his brother, and then only when thin reddish-white foam-bubbles began to burst from the blue lips of Marcus.
“It is murder.”
He spoke low, but it was like the surf of breakers in the ears of those who heard.
“You have said one part of a true word, Gloom Achanna. It is murder—that you and he came here for!”