Peeping into the open door, they saw
a sight which sent them flying, with white faces into the village.
Within an hour, I was on the spot and had taken over the case.
"Well, I have fairly steady nerves, as you know, Mr. Holmes,
but I give you my word, that I got a shake when I put my head
into that little house. It was droning like a harmonium with the
flies and bluebottles, and the floor and walls were like a
slaughter-house. He had called it a cabin, and a cabin it was, sure enough,
for you would have thought that you were in a ship. There was a
bunk at one end, a sea-chest, maps and charts, a picture of the
Sea Unicorin, a line of logbooks on a shelf, all exactly as one
would expect to find it in a captain's room. And there, in the
middle of it, was the man himself -- his face twisted like a lost
soul in tornment, and his great brindled beard stuck upward in his
agony. Right through his broad breast a steel tarpoon had been
driven, and it had sunk deep into the wood of the wall behind
him. He was pinned like a beetle on a card. Of course, he was
quite dead, and had been so from the instant that he had uttered
that last yell of agony.
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