Khorre goes off.  No one dares approach Haggart; still enraged, he paces back and forth with long strides.  He pauses, glances at the body and paces again.  Then he calls: 

“Flerio!  Did you hear me give orders to kill this man?”

“No, Captain.”

“You may go.”

He paces back and forth again, and then calls: 

“Flerio!  Have you ever heard the sea lying?”

“No.”

“If they can’t find a tree, order them to choke him with their hands.”

He paces back and forth again.  Mariet is laughing quietly.

“Who is laughing?” asks Haggart in fury.

“I,” answers Mariet.  “I am thinking of how they are hanging him and I am laughing.  O, Haggart, O, my noble Haggart!  Your wrath is the wrath of God, do you know it?  No.  You are strange, you are dear, you are terrible, Haggart, but I am not afraid of you.  Give me your hand, Haggart, press it firmly, firmly.  Here is a powerful hand!”

“Flerio, my friend, did you hear what he said?  He says the sea never lies.”

“You are powerful and you are just—­I was insane when I feared your power, Gart.  May I shout to the sea:  ’Haggart, the Just’?”

“That is not true.  Be silent, Mariet, you are intoxicated with blood.  I don’t know what justice is.”

“Who, then, knows it?  You, you, Haggart!  You are God’s justice, Haggart.  Is it true that he was your nurse?  Oh, I know what it means to be a nurse; a nurse feeds you, teaches you to walk—­you love a nurse as your mother.  Isn’t that true, Gart—­you love a nurse as a mother?  And yet—­’string him up with a rope, Khorre’!”

She laughs quietly.

A loud, ringing laughter resounds from the side where Khorre was led away.  Haggart stops, perplexed.

“What is it?”

“The devil is meeting his soul there,” says Mariet.

“No.  Let go of my hand!  Eh, who’s there?”

A crowd is coming.  They are laughing and grinning, showing their teeth.  But noticing the captain, they become serious.  The people are repeating one and the same name: 

“Khorre!  Khorre!  Khorre!”

And then Khorre himself appears, dishevelled, crushed, but happy—­the rope has broken.  Knitting his brow, Haggart is waiting in silence.

“The rope broke, Noni,” mutters Khorre hoarsely, modestly, yet with dignity.  “There are the ends!  Eh, you there, keep quiet!  There is nothing to laugh at—­they started to hang me, and the rope broke, Noni.”

Haggart looks at his old, drunken, frightened, and happy face, and he laughs like a madman.  And the sailors respond with roaring laughter.  The reflected lights are dancing more merrily upon the waves—­as if they are also laughing with the people.