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.”