Father, was that you calling me?
Was it you, the voiceless and the dead?
Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap?
Was it you, thus baptized unto Death, with these flying impurities now flung upon your face?
Why not speak, Father?
Soaking into this filthy ground as you lie here, is your own shape.

Did you never see such a shape soaked into your boat?
Speak, Father.

Speak to us, the winds, the only listeners left you! 'Now see,' said Mr Inspector, after mature deliberation: kneeling on one knee beside the body, when they had stood looking down on the drowned man, as he had many a time looked down on many another man: 'the way of it was this.

Of course you gentlemen hardly failed to observe that he was towing by the neck and arms.' They had helped to release the rope, and of course not.
'And you will have observed before, and you will observe now, that this knot, which was drawn chock-tight round his neck by the strain of his own arms, is a slip-knot': holding it up for demonstration.
Plain enough.
'Likewise you will have observed how he had run the other end of this rope to his boat.' It had the curves and indentations in it still, where it had been twined and bound.
'Now see,' said Mr Inspector, 'see how it works round upon him.

It's a wild tempestuous evening when this man that was,' stooping to wipe some hailstones out of his hair with an end of his own drowned jacket, '-- there! Now he's more like himself; though he's badly bruised,--when this man that was, rows out upon the river on his usual lay.