Pausing only long enough to hoist the boat to the davits, the adventurous sailor descended to one of the bathrooms, where the professor awaited him with a medicated bath already prepared, which was to remove from his person every germ of infection that he might perchance have brought with him from the ship. And the moment that he was safely immersed in this, and further seen to be vigorously applying it to his face, hair, and beard, von Schalckenberg made the rejected clothing into a bundle--which he carefully wrapped in a cloth saturated with disinfectant--and, carrying it up on deck, dropped it overboard. The result of these somewhat drastic, but perfectly justifiable precautions was, that when Mildmay emerged, fully clothed, from the bathroom, the professor announced him to be as clean and wholesome as any of the others of the party. Meanwhile, Sir Reginald, having noted Mildmay's return, and waited until he was safely in the bathroom, at once proceeded to the pilot-house, and starting the engines, put the _Flying Fish_ again on her course. Thus, when at length "the skipper" made his appearance on deck--exhaling a powerful odour of disinfectants--the ship that he had visited was on the horizon, and in flames from stem to stern. "You did your work pretty effectually," said Sir Reginald to him, nodding towards the blazing ship. "I suppose it was the proper thing to do, eh?" "Undoubtedly," answered Mildmay. "We could not salve her, you see; and to leave her drifting about, derelict, would only be to expose other ships to a very serious danger--not necessarily the danger of infection, but the peril of a disastrous collision. There is not the slightest doubt in my mind that many a good ship has gone to the bottom, taking her crew with her, as the result of collision with a derelict in the dark hours of a dirty, windy night; and if a derelict is fallen in with under circumstances which render the salving of her impossible, she certainly ought to be destroyed. Yet, in the case of yonder ship-- which, by the way, is the _Linschoten_, of Rotterdam, Dirk Dirkzwager, master, bound from Batavia to Amsterdam--the necessity was rather a regrettable one; for she carried a valuable cargo, consisting chiefly of coffee, indigo, and tobacco. Her logbook shows that she sailed for home nearly three months ago, and was becalmed on her fourth day out, her present position seeming to indicate that she has remained becalmed ever since--at least, her logbook makes it clear that she met with no wind for seven full weeks after running into the calm. And about that time it appears that sickness of some virulent and deadly kind broke out aboard her--the log does not specify what it was, possibly because the skipper did not know--and within twenty-four hours all hands were down with it. The entry conveying this information is the last in the book, and the rest can only be guessed at; but it must have been pretty bad,