inguishable
heap upon and across the dead figure stretched out upon the floor,
while at the same time a pungent and blinding cloud of gunpowder smoke
filled the apartment. For a few moments the hands twitched
convulsively; the neck stretched itself to an abominable length; the
long, lean legs slowly and gradually relaxed, and every fiber of the
body gradually collapsed into the lassitude of death. A spot of blood
appeared and grew upon the collar at the throat, and in the same
degree the color ebbed from the face, leaving it of a dull and leaden
pallor.

All these terrible and formidable changes of aspect our hero stood
watching with a motionless and riveted attention, and as though they
were to him matters of the utmost consequence and importance; and only
when the last flicker of life had departed from his second victim did
he lift his gaze from this terrible scene of dissolution to stare
about him, this way and that, his eyes blinded, and his breath stifled
by the thick cloud of sulphurous smoke that obscured the objects about
him in a pungent cloud.

V

_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 deliber