I could, but it's all
so blurred--sometimes it seems more like a dream. I couldn't find her
any more; I couldn't hear her; I went all over, everywhere. Once, I
remember, I found myself hanging out of that door between the davits,
looking down into those big black seas and crying like a baby. It's all
riddles and blur. I can't seem to tell you much, sir. It was all--all--I
don't know.

I was talking to somebody else--not her. It was the Inspector. I hardly
knew it was the Inspector. His face was as gray as a blanket, and his
eyes were bloodshot, and his lips were twisted. His left wrist hung
down, awkward. It was broken coming aboard the Light in that sea. Yes,
we were in the living-room. Yes, sir, it was daylight--gray daylight. I
tell you, sir, the man looked crazy to me. He was waving his good arm
toward the weather windows, and what he was saying, over and over, was
this:

"_Look what you done, damn you! Look what you done_!"

And what I was saying was this:

"_I've lost her_!"

I didn't pay any attention to him, nor him to me. By and by he did,
though. He stopped his talking all of a sudden, and his eyes looked like
the devil's eyes. He put them up close to mine. He grabbed my arm with
his good hand, and I cried, I was so weak.

"Johnson," said he, "is that it? By the living God--if you got a woman
out here, Johnson!"

"No," said I. "I've lost her."

"What do you mean--lost her?"

"It was dark," said I--and it's funny how my head was clearing up--"and
the door was open--the store-room door--and I was after her--and I guess
she stumbled, maybe--and I lost her."

"Johnson," said he, "what do you mean? You sound crazy--downright crazy.
Who?"

"Her," said I. "Fedderson's wife."

"_Who?_"

"Her," said I. And with that he gave my arm another jerk.

"Listen," said he, like a tiger. "Don't try that on me. It won't do any
good--that kind of lies--not where _you're_ going to. Fedderson and his
wife, too--the both of 'em's drowned deader 'n a door-nail."

"I know," said I, nodding my head. I was so calm it made him wild.

"You're crazy! Crazy as a loon, Johnson!" And he was chewing his lip
red. "I know, because it was me that found the old man laying on Back
Water Flats yesterday morning--_me!_ And she'd been with him in the
boat, too, because he had a piece of her jacket tore off, tangled in his
arm."

"I know," said I, nodding again, like that.

"You know _what_, you _crazy, murdering fool_?" Those w