The Honour of the Flag

by William Clark Russell

"How did she receive the news?" said I.

"I wish it may not break her heart," said he, gravely. "She was turned into stone. Her stare of grief was dreadful—not the greatest actress could imagine such a look. There'll be no comforting her this side of England."

"Doctor, could he have done it himself?"

"Oh, heaven, no, sir!" and he explained, by recalling the posture of the body and the situation of the hands, not to mention the absence of the weapon, why it was impossible the captain should have killed himself.

I don't know how it came about; but whilst I paced the deck waiting for the reports of the mates and the seamen and the passengers who were helping me in the search, it entered my head to mix up with this murder the spectre, or ghost, that had frightened the Dane at the wheel into a fit, along with the memory of a sort of quarrel which I guessed had happened between Captain Griffiths and Miss Le Grand. It was a mere muddle of fancies at best, and yet they took a hold of my imagination. I think it was about a week before this murder that I had observed the coolness of what you might call a lovers' quarrel betwixt the captain and his young lady, and without taking any further notice of it I quietly set the cause down to Mrs. Burney, who, as a thorough-paced flirt, with fine languishing black eyes, and a saucy tongue, had often done her best to engage the skipper in one of those little asides which are as brimstone and the undying worm to the jealous of either sex. The lovers had made it up soon after, and for two or three days previously had been as thick and lover-like as sweet-hearts ought to be.

But what had the ghost that had affrighted the Dane to do with this murder? And how were Mrs. Burney's blandishments, and the short-lived quarrel betwixt the lovers to be associated with it? Nevertheless, these matters ran in my head as I walked the deck on the morning of that crime, and I thought and thought, scarce knowing, however, in what direction imagination was heading.

The two mates, the seamen, and the passengers arrived with their reports. They had nothing to tell. The steward and the stewardess had searched with the two mates in the saloon or cuddy. Every cabin had been ransacked, with the willing consent of its occupants. The forecastle, and 'tween-decks, and steerage, and lazarette had been minutely overhauled. Every accessible part of the bowels of the ship had been visited; to no purpose. No stowaway of any sort, no rag of evidence, or weapon to supply a clue was discovered.

That afternoon we buried the body and I took command of the ship.

I saw nothing of Miss Le Grand for two days. She kept her cabin, and was seen only by the stewardess, who waited upon her. At the expiration of that time I received a message, and went at once to her berth. I never could have figured so striking a change in a fine woman full of beauty in so short a time, as I now beheld. The fire had died out of her eyes, and still there lurked something weird in the very spiritlessness, and dull and vacant sadness of her gaze. Her cheeks were hollow. Under each eye rested a shadow as though it was cast by a green leaf.

Her first words were: "Cannot you find out who did it?"