"No, madam. We have tried hard; harder for the captain's sake than had he been another, for the responsibility that rests upon the master of an ocean-going vessel makes him an object of mighty significance, believe me, to us sailors."
"But the person who killed him must be in the ship," she cried, in a voice that wanted much of its old clear music.
"One should suppose so; and he is undoubtedly on board the ship; but we can't find him."
"Did he commit suicide?"
"No. Everybody is accounted for."
"What motive," she exclaimed, with a sudden burst of desperate passionate grief, that wrung her like a fit from head to foot, "could any one have for killing Captain Griffiths! He was the gentlest, the kindest—oh, my heart! my heart!" and, hiding her face, she rocked herself in her misery.
I tried my rough, seafaring best to soothe her. Certainly, until this moment I never could have supposed her love for the poor man was so great.
The fear bred of this mysterious assassination lay in a dark and heavy shadow upon the ship. None of us, passengers or sailors, turned in of a night but with a fear of the secret bloody hand that had slain the captain making its presence tragically known once more before the morning.
It happened one midnight, when we were something north of the equator, in the calms and stinging heat of the inter-tropic latitudes, that, having come on deck to relieve the second mate, and take charge of the ship till four o'clock, I felt thirsty, and returned to the cuddy for a drink of water. Of the three lamps only one was alight, and burnt very dimly. There was no moonlight, but a plenty of starshine, which showered in a very rippling of spangled silver through the yawning casements of the skylights.
Just as I returned the tumbler to the rack whence I had removed it, the door of Miss Le Grand's cabin was opened, and the girl stepped forth. She was arrayed in white; probably she was attired in her bed-clothes. She seemed to see me at once, for she emerged directly opposite; and I thought she would speak, or hastily retire. But, after appearing to stare for a little while, she came to the table and leaned upon it with her left hand, sighing several times in the most heart-broken manner; and now I saw by the help of the dim lamplight that her right hand grasped a knife—the gleam of the blade caught my eye in a breath!