“I wonder if a cat or dog has been here,” was Mark’s first thought. Then he remembered that no such animals were aboard the Mermaid.
Something on the floor caught his eye. He stooped and picked it up. It was a slice of bread, but in such shape that the boy stared at it, puzzled as to how it could have become so.
It was flattened out quite thin, but the strangest part of it was that it bore what seemed to be the marks of thumb and fingers from a very large hand. So big, in fact, was the print, that Mark’s hand scarce covered half of it, and, where the bread had been squeezed into a putty like mass (for it was quite fresh) the peculiar markings on the skin of the tips of the fingers were visible.
“It looks as if a giant grabbed this slice of bread,” Mark observed. “There are strange happenings aboard this ship. I wish I knew what they meant.”
He looked all around for the food, thinking perhaps a rat had dragged it off, but there was no trace of it.
Suddenly the boy thought he heard a sound from the big storeroom. He was almost sure he heard something moving in there. He started toward the door when he was stopped by hearing the professor’s voice call:
“Don’t open that door, Mark. Have I not told you that place must not be entered?”
“I thought I heard some one in there,” Mark replied.
“There is nothing in there but some apparatus of mine,” Mr. Henderson said. “I want no one to see it. What is the matter?”
Mark explained matters to the scientist, who had, as he said later, arisen on hearing the boy moving about.