Were it not for Macpherson’s great reputation and personal popularity the captain would scarcely have listened to him in that confused moment. Even as it was, he only understood the doctor to say that Constantine, the Armenian, could be found, and he gave permission in a dazed way for the man and the boy to be seated in the boat before it was lowered. Then Macpherson had to convince a sceptical third officer, and, greatest difficulty of all, he had to bend Karl’s excited wits to the task in hand, for the child was delighted with the adventure. The plash of the oars, the stealing away of the huge black hull of the _Ganges_, the earnest words of Macpherson, soon had their effect. Karl commenced to know what was expected of him. “Yes,” he said, standing up on a seat in his eagerness, and pointing to a different course, “he is there, crying out loud. He is calling for his mother.” Not the best sailor of them all could see or hear aught. Yet, for want of other guide, the third officer swung round the boat’s head. Ever and anon Karl told them where the Armenian was, and even shouted, in his shrill treble, to encourage him. At last, after twenty minutes of strenuous tugging, a quartermaster in the bows roared hoarsely, “By the Lord, I can see him!” “Of course,” chirrupped Karl. “He was there all the time!” So a half-drowned, wholly hysterical Constantine, clinging desperately to a buoy which he refused to abandon, was dragged into the boat, and Karl was restored to his weeping mother’s arms, while strange tales ran through the ship when the screw jogged merrily onwards once more. That saving of Constantine meant a good deal to Karl, as shall be seen. CHAPTER III THE FINDING OF MAGGIE HUTCHINSON Sir William Macpherson earned his K.C.I.E. not so much by his thirty years of Ind as by the comparative leisure which enabled him to write that famous essay on “Brain Excitations.” He has told me since that the genesis of the theory which likens man to an induction coil came to him as the oars swung merrily back to the _Ganges_, he striving the while to restore the Armenian’s vitality. “Karl,” he whispered, stirred by the impulse of the moment, “can you see your father?” The boy looked unerringly towards the north, where Darjeeling lay, eight hundred miles distant. “No,” he said after a slight pause, “it is dark.” “Dark?” repeated the scientist. “Yes, like a fog at night, you know.” “But there is no fog, and it was quite as dark a few minutes since, when you saw Mr. Constantine in the sea.” Karl seemed to focus his thoughts once more. Then he nestled wearily close to his friend. “Something seems to press me back, and I am tired,” he said.