"Put the ship—" He stopped and his face flushed. "I beg pardon," he continued. "It is not mine to give orders, but yonder a man floats. He lies face downward across a piece of wreckage."
Lieutenant Everson hurried into the pilot house, and down to old MacKechnie among his boilers was flashed the signal which swung the gray cruiser off her course in a long arc to the southward.
"A man, you say?" the commander queried as he rejoined Polaris and the king. "But what is it that glitters so?"
Polaris, with the glasses at his eyes again, did not at once reply. When he did, the answer was surprising.
"It is the man that glitters. If he be not of metal himself, then is he clothed in it from head to toe, and it glimmers—" He turned to Minos and lapsed into the Greek of Sardanes. "It glimmers, Minos, as did that suit of armor which thou didst leave behind thee in the cave on the Mount of Latmos," he said.
The king stirred to quick interest. The eyes of the naval lieutenant widened with amazement as Polaris repeated his remark in English.
"A man clothed in metal! In armor!" he exclaimed. "And floating here in the South Atlantic! What can that mean? Poor chap; whoever he is, he will never tell us. He must have been dead for days. But it's well worth the investigation."
Impatiently the three men stood at the rail of the bridge as the ship swung on.
At an eighteen-knot clip, the Minnetonka cut swiftly through the waves, nearer and nearer to the flashing burden of the waves. Soon other eyes not so keen as those of Polaris could descry the strange objective of the ship. Forward along the rail, sailors clustered, shouting their surprise, and staring at the unusual spectacle of the glittering man afloat.