He had just answered, smilingly, a remark of the vivacious little Frenchman, when the attention of the group was attracted by the quarter-master clambering hurriedly up the ladder to the bridge, the ship’s biggest telescope under his arm. He handed it to the captain, who, with the chief and third officers, was looking intently towards a spot a few points on the port bow. After gazing for a minute or two through the telescope, the captain handed it without remark to the chief officer, who looked in his turn and passed it also in silence to the third. The three men below rose to their feet and went to the port-rail, scanning the horizon for the object of the officers’ curiosity. Nothing was to be seen save a limitless expanse of dark, green billows, heaving with the swell. There was a short colloquy on the bridge, after which the third officer ran down the ladder on his way aft. He was intercepted by the little group, who raked him with a gatling-fire of questions. "Only a raft, or wreckage, or sea-serpent, or something," he said in reply. "Perhaps sea-weed." "But you vill examine?" said Desjardins. "De sea-serpent is a subject of im-mense interest to de savants of all nations." The officer laughed. "Well, monsieur," he said, "get a good glass and you’ll have a chance of seeing for yourself; we shall pass it within a short mile." By this time a speck was visible far ahead, which gradually disclosed itself, as the vessel drew nearer, as a half-submerged spar with a tangled mass of rigging. Bob Fawcett and his companions had ceased to take any interest in what appeared to be merely floating wreckage, when they were surprised at hearing the clang of the engine-room bell signalling successive orders. The steamer slowed down, then with helm hard a-starboard crept up to within a hundred yards of the object, and came to a stop. A boat was speedily lowered, and the passengers, drawn from below by the sudden stoppage on the high sea, crowded into the bows, and looked on with breathless curiosity as the third officer steered gingerly up to the spar. It was possible now to make out a human figure rising and falling with the heave of the sea, its outlines half-hidden by the surrounding cordage. The quarter-master was seen to open his huge clasp knife and cut several strands that apparently lashed the castaway to the mast, and the men who had supported the inert body while this was being done lifted it gently into the boat. The passengers heard the third officer’s voice shout the order to give way, and in less than three minutes the boat was being swung in upon the davits, and the _Sardinia_ was again forging ahead at full speed. The castaway, an inert, sodden, unconscious figure, was lifted out of the boat and carried below, to be handed over to the ship’s doctor. "Is there any life in him?" asked Bob Fawcett, pressing forward to the third officer. "As dead as mutton, sir, in my belief. But we’ll do what we can for the poor beggar."