tended to confirm the belief that the spark of life had fled.

Stoddart, the second engineer, was kneeling beside the poor fellow,
rubbing his hands and holding every now and then to his nose what seemed
to me a bottle of ammonia or some very pungent restorative, the powerful
fumes of which overcame the foetid atmosphere of the stoke-hold, Mr
Stokes, looking almost as pale as the unconscious man, assisting with
his unwounded arm, with which he lifted Jackson's head, his broken one
being already set in splints by our doctor-mate.

Blanchard, the other sufferer from the accident, was sitting down on a
bench near by, evidently recovering from the shock he had experienced,
which really was not so serious as at first anticipated, a rather stiff
glass of brandy and water which Garry had given him, having pretty soon
brought him to himself.

All our attention, therefore, concentrated on Jackson, who, as yet, made
no sign of amendment, in spite of every remedy tried by O'Neil.

"By George!" exclaimed Mr Stokes, a few minutes later when we all began
to despair of ever bringing him back to life again. "I'm sure I felt
his head move then!"

"Aye, sir," corroborated Stoddart, pressing his hand gently on Jackson's
chest, to feel his heart, where a slight convulsive movement became
perceptible, at first feeble and uncertain enough, as you may suppose,
but then more and more sustained and regular, as if the lungs were
getting to work again. "Look alive! he's beginning to breathe again--
and--yes--his heart beats, I declare, quite plain!"

"Hurray!" shouted Garry O'Neil, hastily putting to his patient's lips a
medicine glass, into which he dropped something out of a small vial,
filling up the glass with water. "I've got something here shtrang
enough, begorrah, to make a dead man spake!"

The effect of the drug, whatever it was, seemed magical. In an instant
the previously motionless figure moved about uneasily, the pulsation of
his chest grew more rapid and pronounced, and then, stretching out his
clenched hands with a jerk, as if he were suddenly galvanised into life,
thereby displaying the magnificent proportions of his torso, he being
stripped to the waist, Jackson opened his eyes, drawing a deep breath
the while, a breath something between a sob and a sigh!

"Where--where am I?" he said, looking round with a sort of far-away,
dreamy stare, but meeting Mr Stokes' sympathetic gaze, he at once
seemed to recover his consc