The seaman lurched across the room and took up the pen.

“Shall I sign here?” he asked, stooping over the table.

Holmes leaned over his shoulder and passed both hands over his neck.

“This will do,” said he.

I heard a click of steel and a bellow like an enraged bull.  The next instant Holmes and the seaman were rolling on the ground together.  He was a man of such gigantic strength that, even with the handcuffs which Holmes had so deftly fastened upon his wrists, he would have very quickly overpowered my friend had Hopkins and I not rushed to his rescue.  Only when I pressed the cold muzzle of the revolver to his temple did he at last understand that resistance was vain.  We lashed his ankles with cord, and rose breathless from the struggle.

“I must really apologize, Hopkins,” said Sherlock Holmes.  “I fear that the scrambled eggs are cold.  However, you will enjoy the rest of your breakfast all the better, will you not, for the thought that you have brought your case to a triumphant conclusion.”

Stanley Hopkins was speechless with amazement.

“I don’t know what to say, Mr. Holmes,” he blurted out at last, with a very red face.  “It seems to me that I have been making a fool of myself from the beginning.  I understand now, what I should never have forgotten, that I am the pupil and you are the master.  Even now I see what you have done, but I don’t know how you did it or what it signifies.”

“Well, well,” said Holmes, good-humouredly.  “We all learn by experience, and your lesson this time is that you should never lose sight of the alternative.  You were so absorbed in young Neligan that you could not spare a thought to Patrick Cairns, the true murderer of Peter Carey.”

The hoarse voice of the seaman broke in on our conversation.

“See here, mister,” said he, “I make no complaint of being man-handled in this fashion, but I would have you call things by their right names.  You say I murdered Peter Carey, I say I killed Peter Carey, and there’s all the difference.  Maybe you don’t believe what I say.  Maybe you think I am just slinging you a yarn.”

“Not at all,” said Holmes.  “Let us hear what you have to say.”

“It’s soon told, and, by the Lord, every word of it is truth.  I knew Black Peter, and when he pulled out his knife I whipped a harpoon through him sharp, for I knew that it was him or me.  That’s how he died.  You can call it murder.  Anyhow, I’d as soon die with a rope round my neck as with Black Peter’s knife in my heart.”

“How came you there?” asked Holmes.