“But think of her bravery in keeping strong until she had told you all that she had seen!” said the lady. “I never heard of anything so brave! Just fancy her looking out of the port--thinking of her father perhaps”--the lady went on to the end of that pathetic sentence of hers, but it had no effect upon the doctor. “True, very true!” he muttered, looking at his watch. But the major was secretly convulsed for some moments after his wife had spoken her choice piece of pathos, and though he did not betray himself, she knew well all that was in his mind, and so turned away without a further word. So soon as she was out of hearing, the major exchanged confidential chuckles with his old comrade. “He is not what you'd call a handsome man as he lies at present, Campion,” remarked Mr. Harwood, strolling up later in the day. “But you did well not to send him to the forecastle, I think; he has not been a sailor.” “I know it, my boy,” said the doctor. “He is not a handsome man, you say, and I agree with you that he is not seen to advantage just now; but I made up my mind an hour after I saw him that he was not for the forecastle, or even the forecabin.” “I dare say you are right,” said Harwood. “Yes; there is a something in his look that half drowning could not kill. That was the sort of thing you felt, eh?” “Nothing like it,” said the mild physician. “It was this,” he took out of his pocket an envelope, from which he extracted a document that he handed to Harwood. It was an order for four hundred pounds, payable by a certain bank in England, and granted by the Sydney branch of the Australasian Banking Company to one Mr. Oswin Markham. “Ah, I see; he is a gentleman,” said Harwood, returning the order. It had evidently suffered a sea-change, but it had been carefully dried by the doctor. “Yes, he is a gentleman,” said the doctor. “That is what I remarked when I found this in a flask in one of his pockets. Sharp thing to do, to keep a paper free from damp and yet to have it in a buoyant case. Devilish sharp thing!” “And the man's name is this--Oswin Markham?” said the major. “No doubt about it,” said the doctor. “None whatever; unless he stole the order from the rightful owner, and meant to get it cashed at his leisure,” remarked Harwood. “Then he must have stolen the shirt, the collar, and the socks of Oswin Markham,” snarled the doctor. “All these things of his are marked as plain as red silk can do it.” “Any man who would steal an order for four hundred pounds would not hesitate about a few toilet necessaries.” “Maybe you'll suggest to the skipper the need to put him in irons as soon as he is sufficiently recovered to be conscious of an insult,” cried the doctor in an acrid way that received a sympathetic chuckle from the major. “Young man, you've got your brain too full of fancies--a devilish deal, sir; they do well enough retailed for the readers of the _Dominant Trumpeter_, but sensible people don't want to hear them.”