Pike's and mine were the only eyes that
could read it. The sparse hair upon the second mate's crown served
not at all to hide the cleft. It began out of sight in the thicker
hair above the ears, and was exposed nakedly across the whole dome of
head.
The stream of abuse for Ditman Olansen was choked in Mr. Pike's
throat. All he was capable of for the moment was to stare,
petrified, at that enormous fissure flanked at either end with a
thatch of grizzled hair. He was in a dream, a trance, his great
hands knotting and clenching unconsciously as he stared at the mark
unmistakable by which he had said that he would some day identify the
murderer of Captain Somers. And in that moment I remembered having
heard him declare that some day he would stick his fingers in that
mark.
Still as in a dream, moving slowly, right hand outstretched like a
talon, with the fingers drawn downward, he advanced on the second
mate with the evident intention of thrusting his fingers into that
cleft and of clawing and tearing at the brain-life beneath that
pulsed under the thin film of skin.
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