"As dead as mutton, sir, in my belief. But we'll do what we can for the poor beggar."
He passed on; and, catching a glimpse of the castaway as he was borne down the companion-way, Bob noticed that he had but one ear. In a few minutes the passengers had resumed the occupations and amusements which the incident had interrupted. The curiosity of the most of them finally evaporated when it became known that the figure saved from the sea was nothing more romantic than the body of a Chinaman. Bob Fawcett was not a sufficiently hardened traveller to take the matter so lightly. But learning on enquiry that the doctor had little hope of the man's recovery, and that in any case his resuscitation would take some time, he went back to his companions, and found that they had been joined by another passenger—a stranger to him. The new-comer was a stout, brown-bearded, spectacled man, with cheeks puffy and sallow. He leant heavily on a stick, and every now and then rammed his soft wide-awake down upon his head, evidently in apprehension of its being swept away by the breeze.
"Feel better?" Bob heard Morton say as he approached.
"Ach ja!" was the reply. "I do feel better, zairtainly, but not vell, not vell by no means."
"You'll be all right soon. Fawcett, let me introduce you to Herr Schwab; don't think you've met. He came on at Shanghai, and—well, hasn't been visible since. My friend Mr. Fawcett—Herr Schwab."
"Glad to meet you, sir," said Bob, lifting his cap. The German was a second or two behind in the salutation, not from lack of native courtesy, but because his hand had to skirt the limp brim of his wide-awake and come perpendicularly on to the crown, which he raised between finger and thumb.
"Most delighted," he said with guttural urbanity. "I lose much zrough my so unlucky disbosition to sea-illness; it keep me downstair all ze time since ve leave Shanghai. Ze loss of food, zat is nozink; it is ze gombany. Vy, I regollect, ven first I voyage to Zanzibar it lose me vun big order for bianofortes. At Massowa zere come on board a Somali sheik vat vas fery musical. I vas below—fery ill. Vat could I? Ze sheik, he buy concertina from ze rebresentative of concertina house. Now ze Somali, zey all blay concertina; zey might haf blayed biano!"
"And are you in pianos now, sir?" asked Bob, smiling.
"Vell, yes, but primarily I am in literature. I haf ze honour to rebresent ze Düsseldörfer Tageblatt, a journal of fery vide circulation in Werden, Kettwig, Mülheim, Odenkolin, Grevenbroich—zobsgribtion, twenty-zree mark fifty, payableinadvance."
He handed Bob a card with these particulars duly set forth, and paused as if for a reply.