Sailors have keen noses. They smelt blood at once, and crowded round the companionway: where Margaret still sat, as if numb, on the top step.

Emily lay in the bunk below, her eyes shut⁠—conscious again, but her eyes shut.

The Dutch captain they could see on the floor, stretched in a pool of blood. “ But, Gentlemen, I have a wife and children! ” he suddenly said in Dutch, in a surprised and gentle tone: then died, not so much of any mortal wound as of the number of superficial gashes he had received.

It was plainly Margaret who had done it⁠—killed a bound, defenceless man, for no reason at all; and now sat watching him die, with her dull, meaningless stare.