is spirit. Not since the days of Olympus was there any
record of man or god being received into any society whatever without
his sartorial shell, thought Jimmy. But in spite of his discomfort, he
was glad he was there. The intuition that had led him since that
memorable Sunday afternoon was strong within him still, and he never
questioned its authority. He believed his turn would come, even though
he were a prisoner in the fo'cas'le of the _Jeanne D'Arc_.

As the violence of his sickness passed, Jim began to cast about for
some means of helping himself. Gradually he was able to dive into the
forgotten shallows of his French learning. By much wrinkling of brows
he evolved a sentence, though he had to wait some hours before there
was a favorable chance to put it to use. At last his time came, with
the arrival of his former friend, the sailor.

"Oo avay-voo cashay mon money-belt?" he inquired with much confidence,
and with pure Yankee accent.

The sailor answered with a shrug and a spreading of empty hands.

"Pas de money-belt, pas de pantalon, pas de tous! Dam queer
Amayricain!"

Jim was not convinced of the sailor's innocence, but perceived that he
must give him the benefit of the doubt. As the sailor intimated, Jim,
himself, was open to suspicion, and couldn't afford to be too zealous
in calumniating others. He fell to thinking again, and attacked the
next Frenchman that came into the fo'cas'le with the following:

"Kond j'aytay malade don ma tate, kee a pree mon money-belt?"

It was the ship's cook this time, and he turned and stared at Jimmy as
though he had seen a ghost. When he found tongue he uttered a volume
of opinion and abuse which Jimmy knew by instinct was not fit to be
translated, and then he fled up the ladder.

On the fourth day, toward evening, James had a visitor. All day the
yacht had been pitching and rolling, and by afternoon she was laboring
in the violence of a storm and was listing badly.

James was a fearless seaman, but it crossed his mind more than once
that if he were captain, and if there were a port within reach, he
would put into it before midnight. But he could tell nothing of the
ship's course. He turned the subject over in his mind as he lay on his
bunk in that peculiar state half-way between sickness and health, when
the body is relaxed by a purely accidental illness and the mind is
abnormally alert. He wished intensely for a bath, a shave, and a fair
complement