in the early morning. It did not alarm him that he wanted to get away from Valerie for a few days. There were times when he liked to get away from her because he so enjoyed going back to find her there.
He was about a mile above Dargaville, and looking up at a pile of cumulous clouds, when he felt the launch bump something. He had not noticed anything conspicuous on the water ahead of him. Looking back he saw a horrible thing, the water-bloated face of a man. He gave a shuddering groan and felt instantly nauseated. Automatically he ran on for a few yards, then he slowed down and began a tormenting wrestle with himself. He wanted to run on and leave it. It made him sick even to think of it. What did it matter what happened to it, a hideous dead thing? But somebody would want it. And if he left it now it might sink, and never be heard of again, and women and children might go on crying for it. And he could not face anyone with the tale that he was afraid of it, that he loathed it. He looked up and down the river. There was nothing in sight. No one would ever know he had seen it. But he would know himself that he had seen it and deserted it.
“God damn it!” he raged. “Why does this happen to me?”
He turned the launch back, went alongside it and looked at it. He broke out with an oath, an explosion rare to him. He knew the dreadful face. It was that of an Australian, who had drifted six months before to one of the mills on the river. He had been a jolly reckless chap, and Dane had had many a drink with him. Now he knew he could not leave him to drift down the river. There was an irresistible human cry in the pulpy eyes upturned to the sky and in the peeling face. Grinding his teeth Dane took a handkerchief out of his pocket, and with nausea
