use with the stranger, or what
business kept him there when the island was a death-trap. These
questions, however, the man answered for himself before many minutes
had passed; and, moreover, a seaman's instinct seemed to tell me that
he was a friend.

"Walk right in here," he cried, opening a door behind him and showing
me a room I had not entered when I visited Mme. Czerny. "Walk right in
and don't gather daisies on the way. You've been on a pleasure cruise
in the fog, I suppose--well, that's a sailor all the time--just all the
time."

He opened the door, I say, upon this, and when we had followed him into
the room he shut it as quickly. It was not a very large apartment, but
I noticed at once that the windows were blocked and curtained, and that
half the space was lumbered up with great machines which seemed made up
of glass bowls and jars; while a flame of gas was roaring out of an
iron tube, and a current of delicious fresh air blowing upon our faces.
Whatever we were in for, whether friendship or the other thing, a man
could breathe here, and that was something to be thankful for.

"We were caught in the woods and ran for it," said I, thinking in time
to make my explanations; "it may have been a fool's errand, but it has
brought us to a wise man's door. You know what the lad's trouble is, or
you wouldn't be in this house, sir. I'll thank you for any kindness to
him."

He turned a pleasant face towards me and bade me lay Dolly on the sofa
near the flaming burner. Peter Bligh was sitting on a chair, swearing,
I fear, as much as he was coughing. Seth Barker, who had the lungs of a
bull, looked as though he had found good grass. The fog wasn't made, I
do believe, which would harm him. As for the doctor himself, he seemed
like a perplexed man who has time for one smile and no more.

"The lad will be all right in five minutes," said he, seriously; "there
is air enough here, we being five men, for," he appeared to pause, and
then he added, "for just three days. After that--why, yes, we'll begin
to think after that."

I did not know what to say to him, nor, I am sure, did the others.
Dolly Venn had already opened his eyes and lay back, white and
bloodless, on the sofa. A hissing sound of escaping gas was in the
room. I breathed so freely that a sense of excitement, almost of
intoxication, came upon me. The doctor moved about quietly and
methodically, now looking to his burners, now at the machines. Five
minutes cam