The Crystal World. Robert MacFarlane

      Louise shrugged. ‘Perhaps it would suit him to have you there.’

      ‘Perhaps …’ They had passed the main piers of the native harbour, and Sanders stopped and spoke to the half-castes who owned the fishing boats moored along the bank. They shook their heads when he mentioned Mont Royal, or seemed too unreliable to trust.

      He rejoined Louise. ‘No good. They’re the wrong kind of boats anyway.’

      ‘Is that the ferry over there?’ Louise pointed a hundred yards along the bank, where half a dozen people stood at the water’s edge near a landing stage. Two men armed with poles were steering in a large skiff.

      When Louise and Dr. Sanders approached they saw that the boatmen were bringing in the floating body of a dead man.

      The group of onlookers moved back as the body, prodded by the two poles, was beached in the shallows. After a pause, someone stepped forward and pulled it on to the damp mud. For a few moments everyone looked down at it, as the muddy water ran off the drenched clothing and drained from the blanched cheeks and eyes.

      ‘Oooohh …!’ With a shudder, Louise turned and backed away, stumbling a few feet up the bank to the landing stage. Leaving her, Dr. Sanders bent down to inspect the body. That of a muscular fair-skinned European of about thirty, it appeared to have suffered no external physical injuries. From the extent to which the dye had run from the leather belt and boots it was plain that the man had been immersed in water for four or five days, and Sanders was surprised to find that rigor mortis had still not occurred. The joints and tissues were malleable, the skin firm and almost warm.