his post. Quickly the staff officers made the
rounds, received the reports of the detachment commanders and the boat
crews, and returning, with soldierly salute, gave the results to the
commanding officer, who had taken position with the captain on the
bridge.

For five or ten minutes the upper deck was dotted by squads of
blue-shirted soldiers, grouped in disciplined silence about the boats.
Then the recall was sounded, and slowly and quietly the commands
dispersed and went below.

It so happened that in returning to the forecastle about a dozen
troopers passed close to where Stuyvesant lay, a languid spectator, and
at sight of his pale, thin face two of them stopped, raised their hands
in salute, looked first eager and pleased, and then embarrassed. Their
faces were familiar, and suddenly Stuyvesant remembered. Beckoning them
to come nearer, he feebly spoke:

"You were in the car-fire. I thought I knew your faces."

"Yes, sir," was the instant reply of the first. "We're sorry to see the
lieutenant so badly hurt--and by that blackguard Murray too, they say.
If the boys ever get hold of him, sir, he'll never have time for his
prayers."

"No, nor another chance to bite," grinned the second, whom Stuyvesant
now recognized as the lance corporal of artillery. "He's left his mark
on both of us, sir," and, so saying, the soldier held out his hand.

In the soft and fleshy part of the palm at the base of the thumb were
the scars of several wounds. It did not need an expert eye to tell that
they were human-tooth marks. There were the even traces of the middle
incisors, the deep gash made by the fang-like dog tooth, and between the
mark of the right upper canine and those of three incisors a smooth,
unscarred space. There, then, must have been a vacancy in the upper jaw,
a tooth broken off or gone entirely, and Stuyvesant remembered that as
Murray spoke the eye-tooth was the more prominent because of the ugly
gap beside it.

"He had changed the cut of his jib considerably," faintly whispered
Stuyvesant, after he had extended a kind but nerveless hand to each,
"but that mark would betray him anywhere under any disguise. Was Foster
ever found?"

"No, sir. They sent me back to Sacramento, but nobody could remember
having seen anybody like him. I'm afraid he was drowned there at
Carquinez. My battery went over with the third expedition while I was up
there. That's how I happen to be with the cavalry on this trip." Then up