Although the company had held to Mrs. Keeling that the captain was not to blame, their talk with that gentleman was of an entirely different tone.
"That is the strange part of it, sir. The hatch has not been opened this voyage, sir, and was securely bolted down."
"Nonsense! Nobody will believe such a story! Someone has been careless! Ask the purser to come here, please."
When the purser saw the body, he recollected, and came as near fainting as a purser can.
They dropped Keeling overboard in the night, and the whole affair was managed so quietly that nobody suspected anything, and, what is the most incredible thing in this story, the New York papers did not have a word about it. What the Liverpool office said about the matter nobody knows, but it must have stirred up something like a breeze in that strictly business locality. It is likely they pooh-poohed the whole affair, for, strange to say, when the purser tried to corroborate the story with the dead man's ticket the document was nowhere to be found.
The Gibrontus started out on her next voyage from Liverpool with all her colors flying, but some of her officers had a vague feeling of unrest within them which reminded them of the time they first
