The night was a night for serenades of love, for lutes, for ardent whispers, for anything but work like this.
The noose was thrown over the pilot’s head carelessly, as though the sailor were casting a quoit upon a peg. The captive opened his lips as though to speak, but the rope was tight-drawn, and the effort ended in a gulp, vainly. Suddenly there was a guttural, inarticulate cry, a choking sound, and a bulky form went up half-way to the yard-arm. In that instant, hurrying, uncertain footsteps scraped along the deck, and Ananias Dare reeled into the silent circle. He gesticulated and moved his arms, striving to point steadily at the swaying figure in the moonlight. But he uttered only a gibberish of broken, unmeaning syllables, and then, lurching to the bulwark, went deathly sick in unrestrainable nausea.
The figure above, still rocking slightly from the upward swing, held out a thick forefinger and pointed to the new-comer, while a smile, ghastly in the moonshine, and triumphant even in the last agony, crossed its bestial face.
Vytal turned and looked at Ananias, who was now but a mumbling, terror-stricken heap upon the deck. Vytal had looked at the man before, but now for the first time seemed to gaze into him.
“Ugh!” muttered Roger Prat, shuddering. “Goodman Thong did his work well, but the pilot has done his duty even better.”
The sun, several hours later, peering through the grayness, saw a heavy thing, limp and motionless, depending from the yard-arm of a lonely ship. It was a man of revolting countenance, black from strangulation, and pitted with the marks of a disease. Over the brow a shock of coarse red hair hung in strands like streaks of fire, and from the chin a ruddy beard flared across the chest. On one of the broad shoulders sat a great white gull, its beak buried in the flame.
But soon a sailor appeared on deck, whistling cheerily in the morning watch. He cut the thing down, and, grumbling over its weighty bulk, cast it headlong into the sea.