He returned after a few minutes, and two seamen accompanied him, one of them being Joe Wetherly. The others, heedless of all custom, in their devouring curiosity came shouldering one another into the cuddy, thrusting inch by inch to the centre of it, where they stood staring—a wild and rugged group, indeed, in that light; hairy breasts, naked, weather-darkened nervous arms liberally scored with blue devices, bare feet, gleaming eyes, sheath-knives on their hips—I could scarcely wonder that Miss Temple shrank from them, and clung to my side with her hand in my arm! They did not need the character the captain had given them to make her do that! Lush forced the door of the berth; it flew open to a heavy blow, and I advanced to take a view of the interior, Miss Temple letting go of my arm with an exclamation, rather choosing to remain alone near the sailors than take a peep at the horror her imagination bodied forth. A small bracket lamp was burning brightly. In the centre of the deck of the cabin lay the body of Captain Braine. He was on his breast, his arms were outstretched, one leg was crooked, as though broken under the other. A pistol of a pattern somewhat similar to the one I had discovered in Mr. Chicken’s locker lay beside his right hand. These details we immediately witnessed; but we had to look a little before we could distinguish the great stain of blood upon the square of drugget under the cheek of the poor creature, and showing in a black line from a hole on a level with his eye. ‘He has shot himself, as you said,’ exclaimed the carpenter in a hoarse note, and backing half a pace to the right. ‘Turn him over, Bill,’ said Wetherly to the other sailor. ‘Not me! Handle him yourself, Joe.’ Wetherly fell upon a knee, and got the corpse on its back. After my experience with the body on the wreck, I should have deemed myself equal to any sort of ghastly sight-seeing; but that dead captain’s face was more than I could bear, and I was forced to look away and to keep my gaze averted, to rally my nerves from the shock the spectacle had given them. The crew had come shoving right to the very cabin door, and stood in a crowd, staring open-mouthed with a sort of groaning of exclamations breaking out from amongst them. ‘A bad job this, sir,’ said Wetherly, looking round to me. ‘He’ll be stone-dead, I suppose?’ said the carpenter. ‘O God, yes!’ I exclaimed. The carpenter seemed to wait, as if he expected me to give directions. ‘Better get the body into the bunk, Mr. Lush,’ said I, ‘and cover it up for to-night.’ ‘Ay, hide it as soon as ye will, Joe,’ exclaimed the carpenter; and as he said these words, I observed that he rolled his eyes with an expression in them of keen and thirsty scrutiny over the cabin.