“What are you prating there, you scarecrow?” asks the abbot.

Khorre continues: 

“Here it goes, Noni; I am straightening it out little by little!  But where have we buried it, the barrel?  Do you remember, Noni?  I have forgotten.  They say it’s from the gin, kind people; they say that one’s memory fails from too much gin.  I am a drunkard, that’s true.”

“If you are not inventing—­then you had better choke yourself with your gold, you dog!” says the abbot.

Haggart—­Khorre!

Khorre—­Yes.

Haggart—­To-morrow you will get a hundred lashes.  Abbot, order a hundred lashes for him!

Abbot—­With pleasure, my son.  With pleasure.

The movements of the fishermen are just as slow and languid, but there is something new in their increased puffing and pulling at their pipes, in the light quiver of their tanned hands.  Some of them arise and look out of the window with feigned indifference.

“The fog is rising!” says one, looking out of the window.  “Do you hear what I said about the fog?”

“It’s time to go to sleep.  I say, it’s time to go to sleep!”

Desfoso comes forward and speaks cautiously: 

“That isn’t quite so, abbot.  It seems you didn’t say exactly what you ought to say, abbot.  They seem to think differently.  I don’t say anything for myself—­I am simply talking about them.  What do you say, Thomas?”

Thomas—­We ought to go to sleep, I say.  Isn’t it true that it is time to go to sleep?

Mariet (softly)—­Sit down, Gart.  You are tired to-night.  You don’t answer?

An old fisherman says: 

“There used to be a custom in our land, I heard, that a murderer was to pay a fine for the man he killed.  Have you heard about it, Desfoso?”

Another voice is heard: 

“Philipp is dead.  Philipp is dead already, do you hear, neighbour?  Who is going to support his mother?”

“I haven’t enough even for my own!  And the fog is rising, neighbour.”

“Abbot, did you hear us say:  ’Gart is a bad man; Gart is a good-for-nothing, a city trickster?’ No, we said:  ’This thing has never happened here before,’” says Desfoso.

Then a determined voice remarks: 

“Gart is a good man!  Wild Gart is a good man!”

Desfoso—­If you looked around, abbot, you couldn’t find a single, strong boat here.  I haven’t enough tar for mine.  And the church—­is that the way a good church ought to look?  I am not saying it myself, but it comes out that way—­it can’t be helped, abbot.

Haggart turns to Mariet and says: 

“Do you hear, woman?”

“I do.”

“Why don’t you spit into their faces?”

“I can’t.  I love you, Haggart.  Are there only ten Commandments of God?  No, there is still another:  ‘I love you, Haggart.’”