The Unexpected Encounter with the Sea-captain with the Broken Nose
If our hero had been distracted and bedazed by the first catastrophe that had befallen, this second and even more dreadful and violent occurrence appeared to take away from him, for the moment, every power of thought and of sensation.All that perturbation of emotion that had before convulsed him he discovered to have disappeared, and in its stead a benumbed and blinded intelligence alone remained to him.As he stood in the presence of this second death, of which he had been as innocent and as unwilling an instrument as he had of the first, he could observe no signs either of remorse or of horror within him.He picked up his hat, which had fallen upon the floor in the first encounter, and, brushing away the dust with the cuff of his coat sleeve with extraordinary care, adjusted the beaver upon his head with the utmost nicety.Then turning, still stupefied as with the fumes of some powerful drug, he prepared to quit the scene of tragic terrors that had thus unexpectedly accumulated upon him.
But ere he could put his design into execution his ears were startled by the sound of loud and hurried footsteps which, coming from below, ascended the stairs with a prodigious clatter and bustle of speed.At the landing these footsteps paused for a while, and then approached, more cautious and deliberate, toward the room where the double tragedy had been enacted, and where our hero yet stood silent and inert.
All this while Jonathan made no endeavor to escape, but stood passive and submissive to what might occur.He felt himself the victim of circumstances over which he himself had no control.
Gazing at the partly opened door, he awaited for whatever adventure might next befall him.Once again the footsteps paused, this time at the very threshold, and then the door was slowly pushed open from without.
As our hero gazed at the aperture there presently became disclosed to his view the strong and robust figure of one who was evidently of a seafaring habit.From the gold braid upon his hat, the seals dangling from the ribbon at his fob, and a certain particularity of custom, he was evidently one of no small consideration in his profession.He was of a strong and powerful build, with a head set close to his shoulders, and upon a round, short bull neck.He wore a black cravat, loosely tied into a knot, and a red waistcoat elaborately trimmed with gold braid; a leather belt with a brass buckle and hanger, and huge sea-boots completed a costume singularly suggestive of his occupation in life.His face was round and broad, like that of a cat, and a complexion stained, by constant exposure to the sun and wind, to a color of newly polished mahogany.But a countenance which otherwise might have been humorous, in this case was rendered singularly repulsive by the fact that his nose had been broken so flat to his face that all that remained to distinguish that feature were two circular orifices where the nostrils should have been.His eyes were by no means so sinister as the rest of his visage, being of a light-gray color and exceedingly vivacious--even good-natured in the merry restlessness of their 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.
