Freed of his armor, his body cleared and his scarred face and arms in bandages, he lay tossing in a bunk in one of the cabins. Dr. Marsey was unremitting in his care of the patient whom the sea had given him. Hot gruel and small doses of brandy, administered alternately, had turned the ebbing tide of the man's vitality. He was gathering strength. But his consciousness still strayed beyond the powers of any tempest to disturb it.
Another who thought nothing of the gale and its accompanying terrors was Zenas Wright.
Coupled with his keen and scientific mind, there was in the old geologist the enthusiasm of a boy, and an overmastering curiosity to learn new things. Many and wild had been the guesses which had followed the finding of the red-haired stranger. That he had been shipwrecked was plain enough to all. But who and what was he?
Some star out of opéra-bouffe, said one, out of a job and reduced to the necessity of wearing one of his own costumes. A lunatic, another said, and found more to agree with him. But whence the armor and the mask?
Let guessers guess and tempests roar, said Zenas Wright to himself. He was on the trail of knowledge. So he slipped into the cabin where the stranger lay. He stood at the head of the bunk and looked down where the red hair of the derelict flared on the pillow. The impressions left by the straps of his mask had filled out, and the lineaments of the man were more distinguishable than they had been. It was an agreeable face, thought Zenas Wright; all of it that the bandages did not hide. There were distinct lines of humor at the corners of the straight mouth and tiny wrinkles at the base of the craggy nose—lines which said that the wearer of them was a hearty fellow, who ofttimes had laughed long and merrily at jokes, whether of his own or another's making.
"But," thought Zenas to himself, "Marsey's been giving the fellow altogether too much brandy, or else he is in a rare fever." The geologist laid the back of his hand to the man's cheek. He found it cool. But it was ruddy to the ears, with the ruddiness that is associated with an intimate camaraderie with the wine cups.
At the touch of the old man's fingers, the stranger ceased his tossing. His eyes opened. One flash from them Zenas Wright caught, and he saw that they were sea-blue, bright and leaping eyes. Then their lids closed. The man shook his head wearily, and from his lips trembled what might have been a moan or a muttered word. The scientist bent hastily to listen, but the man made no further sound. As the old man watched him, his form relaxed and he lay apparently in a dreamless, voiceless slumber.
From the floor, Wright took up the shining helmet, and from a stand the queerly fashioned mask. He was about to leave the cabin when his attention was arrested by the garb which the stranger had worn underneath his armor and which was flung across the back of a chair. One garment it was, even to the feet of it, like the sleeping suit of a child. It was of a soft, fine fabric, almost of the thinness of gauze, yet firmly and closely woven and warm to the feel. But it was neither of cotton nor of wool, nor yet of silk, or any other material with which the scientist was familiar.
He shook his head over it; and then, with the mask and helmet, he left the cabin.