Brand paused in his labor.
"Listen, Jim," he said, earnestly. "I want both you and Jones to oblige me by saying nothing about the shark. Please do not mention my connection with the affair in any way. The story will get into the newspapers as it is. The additional sensation of the fight would send reporters here by the score. I don't wish that to occur."
"Do you mean to say—
"Mr. Jones will report the picking up of the boat, and the finding of the baby, together with the necessary burial of a man unknown—
"What sort of a chap was he?" interrupted Jim.
"I—I don't know—a sailor—that is all I can tell you. He must have been dead several days."
"Then how in the world did that baby keep alive?"
"I have been thinking over that problem. I imagine that, in the first place, there was a survivor, who disappeared since the death of the poor devil out there—" he pointed to the sea. "This person, whether man or woman, looked after the child until madness came, caused by drinking salt water. The next step is suicide. The little one, left living, fell into the bilge created by the shipping of a sea, and adopted, by the mercy of Providence, a method of avoiding death from thirst which ought to be more widely appreciated than it is. She absorbed water through the pores of the skin, which rejected the salty elements and took in only those parts of the compound needed by the blood. You follow me?"
"Quite. It's a slap-up idea."
"It is not new. It occurred to a ship's captain who was compelled to navigate his passengers and crew a thousand miles in open boats across the Indian Ocean, as the result of a fire at sea. Well, the child was well nourished, in all likelihood, before the accident happened which set her adrift on the Atlantic. She may have lost twenty or thirty pounds in weight, but starvation is a slow affair, and her plumpness saved her life in that respect. Most certainly she would have died today, and even yet she is in great danger. Her pulse is very weak, and care must be taken not to stimulate the action of the heart too rapidly."