Yet I could not talk with Ratsey, nor answer any of his questions, though
another time I should have put a thousand to him myself; and he seeing
'twas no good sat by me in silence, using a spy-glass now and again to
make out the things floating at sea. As the day grew the men left the
fire at the back of the beach, and came down to the sea-front where the
waves were continually casting up fresh spoil. And there all worked with
a will, not each one for his own hand, but all to make a common hoard
which should be divided afterwards.
Among the flotsam moving outside the breakers I could see more than one
dark ball, like black buoys, bobbing up and down, and lifting as the
wave came by: and knew them for the heads of drowned men. Yet though I
took Ratsey's glass and scanned all carefully enough, I could make
nothing of them, but saw the pinnace floating bottom up, and farther out
another boat deserted and down to her gunwale in the water. 'Twas midday
before the first body was cast up, when the sky was breaking a little,
and a thin and watery sun trying to get through, and afterwards three
other bodies followed. They were part of the pinnace's crew, for all had
the iron ring on the left wrist, as Ratsey told me, who went down to see
them, though he said nothing of the branded 'Y', and they were taken up
and put under some sheeting at the back of the beach, there to lie till a
grave should be made ready for them.
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