time did she feel any fear of
them. She knew they were liable to discover her at any moment, but
they did not, and fortunately indeed she escaped their ferocious jaws.

Her greatest suffering was from the blazing sun, whose rays shot
downward upon her head with pitiless power. When she found her brain
growing dizzy, she averted the danger of sunstroke by dropping or
swimming for some distance below the surface. This always cooled or
refreshed her, though she felt her face and neck blistering under the
fierce rays.

In striving to recall her experience, Miss Lacy is unable to remember a
large portion of the time she spent in the water. She believes she
slept for several hours. What an extraordinary situation! Alone in
the midst of the vast strait in the southern Pacific, surrounded by
sharks, with no friendly sail in sight, and yet slumbering and
unconscious.

Of course she was not swimming all this time. When she found herself
growing weary, she floated on her back for long periods, then propelled
herself first upon one side and then upon the other, and all the time
the dim misty object in the distance remained as far away as ever.
Finally, when she raised her head and looked for it, she was dismayed
at being unable to detect it at all. It had vanished.

Then she knew that it had been an optical delusion from the first.
There was no island or land in sight. She was alone on the vast deep.

But the heroic woman did not despair. After she had been in the water
twenty hours altogether, and was in the last stage of exhaustion, she
was picked up by a boat belonging to the search steamer _Albatross_.
For several hours succeeding her rescue she was delirious, but it was
not long before she was entirely herself, having given a signal proof
of the value of swimming as a lady's accomplishment.

THE WRITING FOUND IN A BOTTLE.

Let me assure the readers, at the beginning of this sketch, that it is
strictly true in every particular. I have no ambition to shine as a
writer of fiction, and, at the request of a number of friends
acquainted with the remarkable circumstances, have sat down to relate,
in a straightforward manner as is at my command; the part that I took
in the history of the famous _Buried Treasure_.

Not the least singular part of this strange business was that, of the
three individuals concerned two were boys, one being my son Frank
(named for his father) and a playmate, Arthur Newman. The lat