The
joints collapsed, and the entire man fell into an
indistinguishable 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 fibre 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.
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