eir glance--albeit they were well-nigh hidden beneath
a black bush of overhanging eyebrows. When he spoke, his voice was so
deep and resonant that it was as though it issued from a barrel rather
than from the breast of a human being.

"How now, my hearty!" cried he, in stentorian tones, so loud that they
seemed to stun the tensely drawn drums of our hero's ears. "How now, my
hearty! What's to-do here? Who is shooting pistols at this hour of
the night?" Then, catching sight of the figures lying in a huddle upon
the floor, his great, thick lips parted into a gape of wonder and his
gray eyes rolled in his head like two balls, so that what with his flat
face and the round holes of his nostrils he presented an appearance
which, under other circumstances, would have been at once ludicrous and
grotesque.

"By the blood!" cried he, "to be sure it is murder that has happened
here."

"Not murder!" cried Jonathan, in a shrill and panting voice. "Not
murder! It was all an accident, and I am as innocent as a baby."

The new-comer looked at him and then at the two figures upon the floor,
and then back at him again with eyes at once quizzical and cunning.
Then his face broke into a grin that might hardly be called of
drollery. "Accident!" quoth he. "By the blood! d'ye see 'tis a
strange accident, indeed, that lays two men by the heels and lets the
third go without a scratch!" Delivering himself thus, he came forward
into the room, and, taking the last victim of Jonathan's adventure by
the arm, with as little compunction as he would have handled a sack of
grain he dragged the limp and helpless figure from where it lay to the
floor beside the first victim. Then, lifting the lighted candle, he
bent over the two prostrate bodies, holding the illumination close to
the lineaments first of one and then of the other. He looked at them
very carefully for a long while, with the closest and most intent
scrutiny, and in perfect silence. "They are both as dead," says he,
"as Davy Jones, and, whoever you be, I protest that you have done your
business the most completest that I ever saw in all of my life."

"Indeed," cried Jonathan, in the same shrill and panting voice, "it was
themselves who did it. First one of them attacked me and then the
other, and I did but try to keep them from murdering me. This one fell
on his knife, and that one shot himself in his efforts to destroy me."

"That," says the seaman, "you may very well tel