The man dragged himself away reluctantly, grumbling to himself, and resumed his place near the mast, keeping his eye steadfastly fixed on the dead body.
A sick shudder passed through Holdsworth as he observed the man’s peculiar stare, and sinking on his knees, he uncovered the child’s face and inspected it attentively, to satisfy himself that he was actually dead. He then raised him in his arms with the intention of casting him overboard. But Johnson came scrambling over to him and gripped him by the wrist.
The expression of his face, made devilish by suffering, was heightened to the horribly grotesque by the action of his mouth, which gaped and contorted ere he could articulate.
“What are you going to do? Keep him!” he exclaimed.
“Why?” answered Holdsworth, looking him full in the face.
But the man could not deliver the idea that was in his mind; he could only look it.
Holdsworth turned his back upon him and raised his burden on a level with the boat’s gunwale, but Johnson grasped the body with both hands.
“Let go!” said Holdsworth.
The man with an oath retained his hold. Weak as Holdsworth was, the passion that boiled in him at the desecration the half-maddened wretch was doing his poor little favourite, gave him temporarily back his old strength. He raised his foot, and, planting it in Johnson’s chest hurled him back; the man fell with a crash over the thwart, and lay stunned.
Holdsworth leaned over the boat’s side and let the body gently sink in the water; which done, he felt that his own turn was come, and dropped in the stern-sheets groaning, with drops in his eyes that scalded them.