All now, without venturing to
touch the loathsome looking thing, gathered around it
endeavoring to ascertain really what it was. "What do
you make of the creature?" asked corporal Nixon, who,
now ascending the side of the boat, observed how much
the interest of his men had been excited.
"I'm sure I can't say," answered Jackson. "It looks for
all the world like a rat, only the hair is so long. Dead
enough though, for it does not budge an inch."
"Let's see what it is," said the man with the long hooked
nose, and the peaked chin.
By no means anxious, however, to touch it with his hands,
he took up the spear and turned over and over the clammy
and motionless mass.
"Just as I thought," exclaimed the corporal, with a
shudder, as the weapon unfolding the whole to view,
disclosed alternately the moistened hair and thick and
bloody skin of a human head.
"Gemini," cried Jackson, how came this scalp here, it
has been freshly taken--this very day--yet how could it
get here?"
"Depend upon't," said Green, "that chief that was here
just now, could tell somethin' about it, if he had a
mind.
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