adliest enemies; but he
would escape them this time.

With a yell he went overboard, and, being no swimmer, would have
drowned had not one of the blue-coated officers flung a lifebuoy. He
came to the surface somewhat saner, and seized the white ring, which
supported him, while the torpedo-boat rushed on. She could not stop for
one man in time of war, with a heavily armed enemy so near.

A twenty-knot gunboat cannot chase a thirty-knot torpedo-boat very long
without losing her below the horizon; but this pursuit lasted ten
minutes from the time the sick man went overboard before the gunboat
ceased firing and slackened speed. The quarry was five miles away, out
of Spanish range, and the floating man directly under her bow. He was
seen and taken on board, with Spanish profanity sounding in his
unregarding ears.

He lay on the deck, a bedraggled heap, gibbering and shivering, while a
surgeon, with cotton in his nostrils and smelling-salts in his hand,
diagnosed his case. Then the gunboat headed north and dropped anchor in
the bight of a small, crescent-shaped sand-key of the Florida Reef. For
the diagnosis was such as to suggest prompt action. Two brave men
bundled him into the dinghy, lowered it, pulled ashore, and laid him on
the sand.

Returning, they stripped and threw away their clothing, sank the boat
with a buoy on the painter, took a swim, and climbed aboard to be
further disinfected. Then the gunboat lifted her anchor and steamed
eastward, her officers watching through glasses a small, low
torpedo-boat, far to the southeast,--too far to be reached by gun
fire,--which was steering a parallel course, and presumably watching
the gunboat.

An idiot, a lunatic, with bloodshot eyes glaring from a yellow face,
raved, rolled, and staggered bareheaded under the sun about the sandy
crescent until sundown, then fell prostrate and unconscious into the
water on the beach, luckily turning over so that his nostrils were not
immersed. The tide went down, leaving him damp and still on the sands.
In about an hour a sigh, followed by a deep, gasping breath, escaped
him; another long inhalation succeeded, and another; then came steady,
healthy breathing and childlike sleep, with perspiration oozing from
every pore. He had passed a crisis.

About midnight the cloudy sky cleared and the tropic stars came out,
while the tide climbed the beach again, and lapped at the sleeping
man's feet; but he did not waken, even when the Spanis