He wore a gully slung by a lanyard around his neck. That knife was twisted tightly in the cord, and the cord itself was imbedded in the flesh of the dead man’s throat. Actually a tournequet had been made of the knife and cord, and the sailor had been strangled. He was a horrid sight, as he lay with his feet to the empty stern and his touseled head thrown back over a seat.
Perhaps many of the details of this awful scene were a matter of later observation; but it seems to me now as though everything about the dead man was photographed upon my brain at the first glance.
And then my gaze roved beyond him. There was a piece of sailcloth laid across the bow of the open boat beyond the stump of the mast. It was dark under that awning. But right at the entrance lay something white and gold.
Without waiting for any order from Mr. Barney, I stood up and leaped into the half wrecked boat. I heard none of the other men speak a word. All my attention was given to the object which my dazzled eyes now rested upon.
A young girl—the prettiest, most appealing child I had ever seen—lay under the awning. Her head was toward me. Her face was as white as milk, and the blue veins showed plainly at her temples and were traced along her throat. Her cheeks were without an iota of color.
She was all white—her face, her thin, ruffled dress—the bare arm from which the sleeve had been pushed back to her elbow. All white, save the great mass of her hair. That was gold—pure gold. Such a beautiful child I had never imagined before. She was twelve or thirteen years old.
“What’s that you got there, Webb?” I heard Mr. Alf Barney shout.
I had dropped on my knees beside the unconscious girl. I saw that she was only delicate and exhausted. There was a breaker of water lashed to the gunwale right beside her, and a cup with water in it. I saw no food; but I knew well enough that the girl was not dying of thirst. No more than the sailor had died of thirst!
I gathered the girl up in my arms. She was a light weight. I thought she sighed and her eyelids fluttered.
And then suddenly sounded a raucous bellow, in a strange tongue, from within the decked-over portion of the boat. Something moved. I leaped back and almost trod upon the dead man.