“Ugh!” cried George; “I’ll never throw out a blamed line in this river again as long as I live.”
“Well I will!” said the Sergeant. “I’ll throw one now. Lend me that shark hook a minute.”
The officer who was paid, not too liberally, by Government, to act either as assistant pathologist or undertaker, as occasion required, jumped upon the after grating with the end of George’s shark line in his hand.
A human head could be seen bobbing gently up and down with the swell and fall of the tide. It drifted neither to right nor left, but in a sort of ghastly oscillation waited—waited. There was a sardonic smile on the parted lips. The smile that is seen on the face of the murdered dead who come up again from under the earth, from the depths of the waters, anywhere. The dead who come for justice.
Livid and ghastly, and utterly unreal and horrible was the face of the corpse floating steadily in that pool of yellow lamplight. And when the Sergeant, after several throws with the line, succeeded in hooking on, it came towards the stern without resistance. The man of law leaned over the low rail to make an examination.
“Fetch the lantern!” he called to the deck-hand, “and a rope.”
The tide lapped by softly, the little town lay wrapped in darkness, broken only by an occasional lantern in the main street, and the dim lamp at the hotel.
“Hold the light over till I see, can’t you?”
“Well, turn your head away if you don’t want to look, or shut your eyes.”
“It’s horrible!” murmured George, whose face was deadly pale. “I don’t want to look at it.”
“Great Scott!” ejaculated the Sergeant, taking another pull on the line.
“What!” cried George, his heart in his mouth.
“Murder!” exclaimed the officer, with a new interest in his voice.
“Look! Yes, by Gad! the man’s been stabbed.”
“No,” said George, sitting down suddenly; “I can’t. I’m hanged if I can!”
The Sergeant was busy with the rope. Notwithstanding his ride of thirty miles, he had become active and alert. He passed a slip-noose over the stern presently, drew it tight, and tied the end securely to a stanchion.
“Now,” he said, his mind already full of business; “You’ll have to stay here and keep an eye on this while I go up town and make arrangements!”