ry soon beef was
steaming on a scale and at a rate unparalleled.

Meantime, Captain Dodd had the patient taken to his own cabin, and he
and his servant administered weak brandy and water with great caution
and skill.

There was no perceptible result. But at all events there was life and
vital instinct left, or he could not have swallowed.

Thus they hovered about him for some hours, and then the bath was ready.

The captain took charge of the patient's clothes: the surgeon and a
sailor bathed him in lukewarm beef-tea, and then covered him very warm
with blankets next the skin. Guess how near a thing it seemed to them,
when I tell you they dared not rub him.

Just before sunset his pulse became perceptible. The surgeon
administered half a spoonful of egg-flip. The patient swallowed it.

By and by he sighed.

"He must not be left, day or night," said the captain. "I don't know who
or what he is, but he is a man; and I could not bear him to die now."

That night Captain Dodd overhauled the patient's clothes, and looked for
marks on his linen. There were none.

"Poor devil" said Captain Dodd. "He is a bachelor."

Captain Dodd found his pocket-book, with bank-notes, two hundred pounds.
He took the numbers, made a memorandum of them, and locked the notes up.

He lighted his lamp, examined the belt, unripped it, and poured out the
contents on his table.

They were dazzling. A great many large pieces of amethyst, and some
of white topaz and rock crystal; a large number of smaller stones,
carbuncles, chrysolites, and not a few emeralds. Dodd looked at them
with pleasure, sparkling in the lamplight.

"What a lot!" said he. "I wonder what they are worth!" He sent for the
first mate, who, he knew, did a little private business in precious
stones. "Masterton," said he, "oblige me by counting these stones with
me, and valuing them."

Mr. Masterton stared, and his mouth watered. However, he named the
various stones and valued them. He said there was one stone, a large
emerald, without a flaw, that was worth a heavy sum by itself; and the
pearls, very fine: and looking at the great number, they must be worth a
thousand pounds.

Captain Dodd then entered the whole business carefully in the ship's
log: the living man he described thus: "About five feet six in height,
and about fifty years of age." Then he described the notes and the
stones very exactly, and made Masterton, the valuer, sign the log.

Staines took a goo