“I have a strong notion that he is a seafarin’ man,” said O’Shea, as he gave the captive a stiff drink of whiskey from the bottle kept in the hall cupboard. “Maybe this will buck him up and set his tongue going. That’s a sailor’s belt he has on, Johnny. And he has the look of it.” The engineer had put his spectacles on his nose and was examining the litter of small objects he had fished out of the man’s pockets. One of them was like a leather thong thickened in the middle, and he cried excitedly: “You’re right, Cap’n Mike. Here’s a sailor’s palm--a sea thimble, and the cuss has mended his clothes with it. See the patch on his shirt, and he has stitched the holes in his shoes with bits of tarred twine.” “He called me shipmate when he asked for a chew, but many a landlubber uses the word and I did not lay much store by it.” “It’s only twenty miles to the Maine coast,” said Johnny Kent, “and he may have wandered inland from one of the ports.” “I have a hunch that he didn’t come out of a coasting schooner. The beggar has sailed deep water in his time. I wonder if he is hungry. Better introduce him to some grub. He is rounding to, but he has about as much conversation in him as an oyster.” The engineer rummaged in the kitchen and brought out a plate of biscuits, cold bacon, potatoes, and pickles, which the red-haired man ate with an avidity that betokened starvation. The sight moved Johnny Kent almost to tears. The last spark of his animosity was quenched. There was no more awful fate than to be separated from three square meals per day. “We’ll swab the dirt off him and shuck those ragged, rotten clothes before we batten him down for the night,” said Johnny. “I can’t leave a sailor in this fix, even if he is flighty in the main-top and has tried to smoke out the whole darn neighborhood.” While he departed in search of a shift of raiment, Captain O’Shea removed the man’s shirt. At the first tug it tore and came away in his hands. The prisoner had remained sitting in the same posture, but now he moved and lazily stretched his length upon the mattress, lying on his stomach, his face pillowed against his arm. His hunger satisfied, the desire of sleep had overtaken him, and his heavy breathing told O’Shea that the extraordinary guest had carried his riddle to dreamland. Johnny Kent had taken the lamp into the house, and the lantern which had been left standing on the floor cast a long, dusky shadow athwart the recumbent figure. The shipmaster stood looking down at the massive shoulders and knotted, hairy arms of the stranger when his attention was fixed by something which caused him to stare as though startled and fascinated and perplexed. The man’s broad back bore some kind of a design, an uncouth, sprawling pattern such as no artist in tattooing could ever have traced to please a sailor’s fancy.