s wits
had not been badly shattered by his experience overboard. But the
sailor who was attending him with such ministrations as he understood,
answered him with a sample of French which Jim had never met with in
his school-books, and he was not enlightened for some hours.

It turned out, indeed, to be the _Jeanne D'Arc_, as Jim proved for
himself the next day, and he was lying in the seamen's quarters in the
fo'cas'le. By morning he felt much better, hungry, and prepared in his
mind for striking a bargain with one of the sailors for clothes. He
could make out their lingo soon, he guessed, and then he would get a
suit of clothes and fare on deck. Suddenly he grasped his waist,
struck with an unpleasant thought; his money-belt was gone! He was
wearing a sailor's blue flannel shirt and nothing else. He turned over
on his hard bunk, thinking that he would have to wait a while before
making his entrance on the public stage of the _Jeanne D'Arc_.

And wait he did. Not a rag of clothing was in sight, and no cajolery
or promise of reward could persuade the ship's men into supplying his
need. He received consignments of food; short rations they would be,
he judged, for an able-bodied seaman. But inactivity and confinement
to the fo'cas'le soon worked havoc with his physique, so that appetite,
and even desire of life itself, temporarily disappeared in the gloom of
seasickness.

In spite of difficulties, Jim tried to find out something about the
boat. The seamen were none too friendly; but by patching up his almost
forgotten French and by signs, he learned something. His sudden
failure of strength in the water had been due to a blow from a floating
spar, as a bruise on his forehead testified; "the old man," whom Jim
supposed to be the captain, was a hard master; Monsieur Chatelard was
owner, or at least temporary proprietor, of the yacht; and the present
voyage was an unlucky one by all the signs and omens known to the
seamen's horoscope.

The sullenness of the men was apparent, and was not caused by the
enforced presence of a stranger among them. In fact, their bad temper
became so conspicuous that Jim began to believe that it might have
something to do with the mysterious actions of the man on shore. He
pondered the situation deeply; he evolved many foolish schemes to
compass his own enlightenment, and dismissed them one by one. He
grimly reflected that a man without clothes can scarcely be a hero,
whatever h