Page:The Gates of Morning - Henry De Vere Stacpoole.pdf/241

 body bent double and head protruding like the head of a tortoise. He seemed choking. He was laughing.

Aioma, like Sru, had a sense of humour, and a joke, if it were really a good joke, took him like the effect of a dose of strychnine. Sure now that Marua had been swallowed by the sea, the catastrophe, having made itself certain and obtained firm footing in his mind, suddenly presented its humorous side. He had remembered the “bad men.” They were swallowed with Marua, he could see them in his imagination swimming like rats, screaming, bubbling—drowning—and the humour of the thing skewered him like a spear in the stomach.