The contempt they already felt for Margaret, their complete lack of pity in her obvious illness and misery, had been in direct proportion to the childhood she had belied.
This crime would have seemed to them grave on the part of a grown man, in its unrelieved wantonness: but done by one of her years, and nurture, it was unspeakable. She was lifted by the arms from the stair where she still sat, and without a moment’s hesitation (other than that resulting from too many helping hands) was dropped into the sea.
But yet the expression of her face, as—like the big white pig in the squall—she vanished to windward, left a picture in Otto’s mind he never forgot. She was, after all, his affair.
The Dutchman’s body was fetched up on deck. Captain Jonsen went below: and once bent over poor little Emily. She only screwed up her eyes tighter, when she felt his hot breath on her face. She did not open them till everybody had quite gone—and shut them again when presently José came to swab the cabin floor.