We looked within, but the interior was so dark that little was visible, even with the door open; but we could see a piece of blanket or battered sail stretched from side to side of the cabin, so as to divide it into two apartments, and we could also discern a rough, ancient-looking chair, and several large articles. I stepped in and drew the curtain aside; I say _drew_ it aside, but it really fell apart in my hand as I endeavoured to do so. Anyhow, enough of it was removed for me to see a most gruesome sight; for there, in the dim light, I could dimly discern the figure of a dead man, sitting by a table or bench, and, as may be supposed, the sight made me recoil against my comrades, whom I so imbued with my fright, that we all rushed out of the hut together. Telling them what I had seen, I sent one of them to the boat for the lantern, so that we could obtain a light, and enter again into the inner apartment of the hut. The lantern being brought, we crowded in quietly together, I being foremost with the light, and there, sure enough, sat a man at the table in such an attitude that, had we not known he must be dead, we should have thought he was simply asleep. He looked about sixty years of age, and possessed very fine intellectual features; but on closer examination we were surprised to find that his beard, instead of being an ordinary one of, say, a few inches long, or even an extraordinary one of a growth reaching to the waist, was of such an abnormal length that it not only reached the floor, but lay there in a huge tangled mass; nor was his hair a whit behind, as it fell in tresses over the back of the chair, and was actually frozen to the floor all around him. His eyebrows, too, hung down over his eyelids touching his cheeks, and as for his finger-nails!--well, they were as long and pointed as “the quills upon the back of the fretful porcupine.” His toe-nails had pierced his shoes, and extended beyond his toes a foot or more. We gazed in silence, being struck speechless with amazement at the marvellous sight, and for some time our eyes were so riveted on the strange object before us, that we forgot each other’s presence. My voice first broke the silence, but as I spoke my words seemed a kind of sacrilege to the presence and awful silence and solemnity of the dead man before us. “Well, mates, what do you make of this?” I asked. No one knew what to make of it, but old Johnson, our carpenter, asked-- “What’s that thing on the table in front of him?” I held the lantern closer, to what appeared to be a curiously-shaped box; it was tall, and narrow, and of an octagonal form. Drawing it towards me I raised the lid, for it was not locked, and discovered another small case within it. This I also opened, and within I found a roll of parchment, on which was clearly written in a bold black lettering, the following words--