Jokes and laughter go with the boat as a rule, and high-pitched nasal patois talk; but here--not a word.
The prow runs grating up the shingle, the heavy feet grind through it all in a line, for none of them has any desire to be first.

Together they bend over that which had been Tom Hamon, and their faces are grim and hard as the rocks about them.

Not that they are indifferent, but that any show of feeling would be looked upon as a sign of weakness.
Under such circumstances men at times give vent to jocularities which sound coarse and shocking.

But they are not meant so--simply the protest of the rough spirit at being thought capable of such unmanly weakness as feeling.
But these men were elementally silent.

One look had shown them there was nothing to be done but that which they had come to do--to carry what they had found back to the waiting crowd at the Creux.
They had none of them cared much for this man.