Page:The Night Born (London,1913).djvu/224

the same instant, with scarcely a splash, the boy entered,

"From the quicker-eyed black boys watching, came an exclamation. We were all at the rail. Don't tell me it is necessary for a shark to turn on its back. That one did n't. In the clear water, from the height we were above it, we saw everything. The shark was a big brute, and with one drive he cut the boy squarely in half.

"There was a murmur or something from among us—who made it I did not know; it might have been I. And then there was silence. Miss Caruthers was the first to speak. Her face was deathly white.

"'I . . . I never dreamed,' she said, and laughed a short, hysterical laugh.

"All her pride was at work to give her control. She turned weakly toward Dennitson, and then on from one to another of us. In her eyes was a terrible sickness, and her lips were trembling. We were brutes—oh, I know it, now that I look back upon it. But we did nothing.

"'Mr. Dennitson,' she said, 'Tom, won't you take me below?'

"He never changed the direction of his gaze, which was the bleakest I have ever seen in a man's