A whistle blew; someone cried: “A man lost!” and Lalette was instantly and horribly seasick. II “I will tell you plainly, demoiselle,” said Captain Mülvedo, “that if it were not for Ser Brog saying how he saw with his own eyes that this young man moved to the rail without your urging, I should have been most skeptic. As things stand, I must acquit you of acts direct. As for others, as employment of the Art, they are a matter for a court of Deacons, and since you are bound to Mancherei, you’ll be beyond such jurisdiction.” He stared at her gloomily. “As captain of this ship, and therefore judge in instruction, I must ask you to keep your cabin until we reach port.” Lalette looked at the moving gullet of the first mate as he stood by the Captain beside the bed, and even this sight seemed to make her the more ill. Said Brog’s voice, dry as a ratchet; “Aye. You have my word for it. The little demoiselle never touched a hand to him as he went over. But he came from her cabin.” “No more rehearsing of things known. We know all except what she will not tell us,” said Mülvedo. (Her body ached all over from lying in the one position.) “Aye.” It was Brog again. “Yesterday he was all quick with life, maybe a little hasty, but a kindly, helpful young man, and now the fishes are tearing pieces of his guts out.” Brog’s face wrinkled in what might have been a smile, had there been any mirth in it. She turned her face away and began to retch, but nothing came up beyond a few drops of spittle, bitter and sour. “Not nice to think on, no,” said Brog. “But nicer than the mind that would bring such a death to the lad; there’s the real, black, stinking hell.” (The bird of Lalette’s mind felt the bars shift in tighter, she wanted to cry and beat with her hands.) Said Captain Mülvedo; “Ser Brog, I have acquit this demoiselle of direct acts. You will oblige me by not questioning as though the matter were still to decide. If this were the Art, no jurisdiction lies in us.” “You are my captain, and I am therefore even under your orders, even as to this court of the ship,” said Brog, his thin lips closing sharply. “But I am master of the cargo, of which she forms a part, and it is my province to know what kind of goods I deliver.” (Lalette had a sense without seeing it directly that the chandelier swung twice as she looked at the three and thought—the truth? But how to explain about the trip, what Tegval had done, how he had demanded the deepest fruit of love as a casual thing like a cup of water, dragging her down?) “Ah, no,” she said in her dying voice, and swallowed again, turning eyes of misery toward the Captain. He frowned (and she knew it for a frown in her favor, and knew the reason for it and hated him and herself). “Ser Brog,” he said, “I now declare the court shut. This demoiselle is not cargo but a person.”