"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 tell to a dry-lander,
and maybe he will believe you; but you cannot so easily pull the