Haggart is silent for a minute; then he takes the pipe from his mouth and laughs gaily.

“Have you invented it yourself?”

“I think so,” says Khorre modestly.

“Clever!  And it was worth teaching you sacred history for that!  Were you taught by a priest?”

“Yes.  In prison.  At that time I was as innocent as a dove.  That’s also from sacred scriptures, Noni.  That’s what they always say there.”

“He was a fool!  It was not necessary to teach you, but to hang you,” says Haggart, adding morosely:  “Don’t talk nonsense, sailor.  Hand me a bottle.”

They drink.  Khorre stamps his foot against the stone floor and asks: 

“Do you like this motionless floor?”

“I should have liked to have the deck of a ship dancing under my feet.”

“Noni!” exclaims the sailor enthusiastically.  “Noni!  Now I hear real words!  Let us go away from here.  I cannot live like this.  I am drowning in gin.  I don’t understand your actions at all, Noni!  You have lost your mind.  Reveal yourself to me, my boy.  I was your nurse.  I nursed you, Noni, when your father brought you on board ship.  I remember how the city was burning then and we were putting out to sea, and I didn’t know what to do with you; you whined like a little pig in the cook’s room.  I even wanted to throw you overboard—­ you annoyed me so much.  Ah, Noni, it is all so touching that I can’t bear to recall it.  I must have a drink.  Take a drink, too, my boy, but not all at once, not all at once!”

They drink.  Haggart paces the room heavily and slowly, like a man who is imprisoned in a dungeon but does not want to escape.

“I feel sad,” he says, without looking at Khorre.  Khorre, as though understanding, shakes his head in assent.

“Sad?  I understand.  Since then?”

“Ever since then.”

“Ever since we drowned those people?  They cried so loudly.”

“I did not hear their cry.  But this I heard—­something snapped in my heart, Khorre.  Always sadness, everywhere sadness!  Let me drink!”

He drinks.

“He who cried—­am I perhaps afraid of him, Khorre?  That would be fine!  Tears were trickling from his eyes; he wept like one who is unfortunate.  Why did he do that?  Perhaps he came from a land where the people had never heard of death—­what do you think, sailor?”

“I don’t remember him, Noni.  You speak so much about him, while I don’t remember him.”

“He was a fool,” says Haggart.  “He spoilt his death for himself, and spoilt me my life.  I curse him, Khorre.  May he be cursed.  But that doesn’t matter, Khorre—­no!”

Silence.

“They have good gin on this coast,” says Khorre.  “He’ll pass easily, Noni.  If you have cursed him there will be no delay; he’ll slip into hell like an oyster.”

Haggart shakes his head: 

“No, Khorre, no!  I am sad.  Ah, sailor, why have I stopped here, where I hear the sea?  I should go away, far away on land, where the people don’t know the sea at all, where the people have never heard about the sea—­a thousand miles away, five thousand miles away!”