ith a view to
solving the mystery.

"I shouldn't be surprised," said he, when Mr Rawlings had completed his
yarn, "if he belonged to that deserted ship which you subsequently came
across; and that in the mutiny, or whatever else occurred on board, he
got wounded and thrown into the sea."

"That is possible," said Mr Rawlings, "but not quite probable,
considering the time that elapsed after our saving him to meeting with
the water-logged vessel, and the distance we traversed in the interval.
Besides, the boy was lashed to the spar that supported him in the water,
and he couldn't have done that, with the wound he had received, by
himself; so that gets rid of the theory of his being half-murdered and
pitched overboard. Altogether, the story is one of those secrets of the
sea that will never be unravelled, unless he comes to his senses at some
time or other and tells us all about it!"

"And you don't know his name, or anything?"

"No, only just what I have told you."

"Had he no marks on his clothing, or anything in his pockets, that might
serve for identification, should any one claim him by and by?" said
Ernest Wilton, pursuing his interrogatories like a cross-examining
barrister fussy over his first case.

"He had nothing on but his shirt and trousers, I tell you," said Mr
Rawlings, laughing at what he called the badgering of the other, just as
if he were in a witness-box, he said, "and boys don't carry many letters
or documents about them, especially in their trousers' pockets; at all
events, they didn't do so when I was a boy. Stay--" he added,
bethinking himself suddenly of one item of the story he had apparently
forgotten till then,--"I certainly passed over something."

"What?" said Ernest, still looking at Sailor Bill steadfastly, as if
trying in vain to summon up the recollection of his features from the
hazy depths of his memory; for the face of the boy seemed more and more
familiar to him the longer he looked.

"Well," replied Mr Rawlings, with a little hesitation, "I don't suppose
you want to know about the boy merely to satisfy an idle curiosity at
seeing the poor, bereaved, young creature to be out of his mind?"

"Certainly not," said Ernest Wilton. "What you have already told me,
besides his own innocent, guileless look, has interested me strangely in
him; and, in addition to that, I'm sure I know something about him or
somebody extremely like him, which I cannot at present recall to my
recolle