Page:Mosquitos (Faulkner).pdf/272

 polite disgust, breaking the spell, “or do you want to row around some more?”

Fairchild went immoderately into hysterical laughter.

The malarial man had attached his skiff to the fat man’s motor boat and they had puttered away in a morose dejection, rewardless; the tug had whistled a final derisive blast, showed them her squat, unpretty stern, where the negro leaned eating again of his grayish object, and as dirty a pair of heels as it would ever be their luck to see, and sailed away. The Nausikaa was free once more and she sped quickly onward, gaining offing, and the final sharp concussion of flesh and flesh died away beneath the afternoon.

Mrs. Maurier had gazed at him, raised her hands in a fluttering cringing gesture, and cut him dead.

“But I saw you on the boat right after we came back,” Fairchild repeated with a sort of stubborn wonder. He opened a fresh bottle.

“You couldn’t have,” Gordon answered shortly. “I got out of the boat in the middle of Talliaferro’s excitement.” He waved away the proffered glass. The Semitic man said triumphantly, “I told you so,” and Fairchild essayed again, stubbornly:

“But I saw—”

“If you say that again,” the Semitic man told him, “I’ll kill you.” He addressed Gordon. “And you thought Dawson was drowned?”

“Yes. The man who brought me back—I stumbled on his house this morning—he had already heard of it, some way. It must have spread all up and down the lake. He didn’t remember the name, exactly, and when I named over the