The look of admiration that he gave her was more offensive than his pretended sympathy. Leaning forward he whispered, "They are going down the river for about two miles. There they will get rid of their troublesome freight and return empty."
"What do you mean?" asked Edmé. "Where do they land the prisoners?"
"They don't land them, they water them," and he gave a low, inward laugh. "They drown every prisoner on board. Tie them together in couples, man and woman, and tumble them overboard by the score."
Edmé gave a cry of horror. "It is too horrible to be true. I don't believe it!"
"Why not?" asked Lebœuf; "drowning is an easy death, and every one of them has been fairly and honestly condemned. This boat is to follow in its turn. Every prisoner here has looked upon the sun for the last time, though not one of them knows just when he is to die."
The idea of such wholesale murder seemed so utterly impossible to her that in her mind she set down Lebœuf's whole account as a fiction of his drink-besotted brain, called up to frighten her. Yet at the moment when she turned from him in disgust to look out of the window, she saw that their own vessel had begun to move slowly through the water.
"We have started," said Lebœuf, as if he were mentioning a matter of the smallest consequence.
"You say that every one upon this boat is a condemned person," said Edmé quietly, repressing her terror with an effort.
Lebœuf nodded.
"But I am not. I have not even had a hearing."