Metallically, the ship’s clock struck six bells into the silence—and Timuroff realized that it was three o’clock and marveled fleetingly that so short a time could have encompassed all that had occurred since the curtain fell on Don Giovanni.
Van Zaam hung suspended by a cord wound twice around his weight-stretched neck, a cord so hard and thin that it had cut and bruised the flesh it violated. His almost colorless blue eyes bulged sightlessly. His cruel mouth hung open, showing a sagging, swollen tongue. He was only too clearly dead. But the terror and revulsion he had inspired in others had not died with him. His life was gone, but evil clung to him like a miasma—to be dissipated, thought Timuroff, only with his body’s ultimate decay. Florencio Pambid had been quite right about the man,
