Just as before, when he awoke on board the _Southern Cross_ in surroundings so bewildering that he gave up the effort to localize them, his puzzled eyes now surveyed white-painted panelled walls, a brass-bound port-light, and some tapestry curtains. At any other time he would have realized at once that he was in a ship's cabin, but now an uncomprehending stare soon yielded to a torpor of pain.

He believed that a gentle hand adjusted a bandage on his head, and was aware of a grateful coldness where before there had been heat and a throbbing ache. Afterwards--he thought it was immediately, though the interval was a full half hour--he looked again at the walls and ceiling with something of real recognition in his glance.

"Glad to see you're regaining your wits, Mr. Alexander," said a man's voice, a strange but very pleasant voice. "Lucky for you you've got the right sort of thick head, or, from what I hear, it would certainly have been cracked twice."

Mr. Alexander! Who was he? And where was he? Where were--

"May he talk a little now, doctor?" and Maseden would have had to be very dead if he did not know that Nina Forbes was sitting by his side.

He turned, and even remembered to repress a groan lest some one in authority might not grant her request.

Even so the doctor was dubious.

"He must not be allowed to get excited," he said.

"Then may he listen to me a minute?"

"Yes, if you really keep to schedule."

"Don't move, Alec!" whispered Nina, and there seemed to be a note in her voice that Maseden had heard only once before, though he could not recall the occasion. "We're on board a mail steamer bound for England, but she touches at Punta Arenas and Buenos Ayres, so you must be 'Mr.

Alexander,' not 'Mr. Maseden,' until we reach home. Don't ask why just now. I'll tell you to-morrow, or next day, when you are stronger. You will trust me, won't you?"

"Trust you, Nina! Yes, forever!"

He looked at her, as though to make sure that his senses were not deceiving him and that it was really Nina Forbes who sat there, a Nina with her hair nicely combed and coiled and wearing a particularly attractive pink jersey and white serge skirt.

He thought that her eyes--those frank blue eyes he had gazed into so often--were suffused with tears.

"Why are you crying?" he demanded, with just a hint of that domineering way of his.

"Not for grief," she said quietly. "But you must drink this now, and go to sleep. When you awaken again, perhaps the doctor will let C. K. come and chat with you."

"C. K.? Is he all right?"

"Yes."

"And Madge?"

"Yes. Not another word. Drink--to please me."

"I'll do anything to please you."

He swallowed some milk and soda-water; took a whole tumbler-full, in fact.

"That's fine," he said. "Now I'll hold your hand and you'll tell me--"

"You're going to close your eyes and lie still," she said firmly. "If you don't I'll leave you. If you do, I'll stay here."

"I'm bribed," he said, smiling. Soon he slept, but this was nature's healing sleep, not the coma of insensibility. When next he entered a world of reality he found Sturgess sitting where Nina had been.

"Going strong now, Alec?" inquired his friend.

Maseden did not answer at once. He wanted to be quite sure that the wretched throbbing in his head had ceased. Yes; there was a great soreness, but it was of the scalp, not of the internal mechanism. He sat bolt upright.

"Hi!" shouted Sturgess, "you mustn't do that! Gosh! The doctor man will raise Cain with me if he knows I let you move."

"I'm all right, C. K."

"You're going to flatten out straight away, or I'll shriek for help."

Maseden lay down. The dominant emotion of the moment was curiosity.

Perhaps, if he kept quiet, Sturgess would talk.

At any rate, the New Yorker was much relieved, and said so.

"You've nearly hopped it," he explained anxiously. "It was a case of touch and go with you for two days, and--"

"Two days!" gasped Maseden. "Have I been stretched here two days?"

"And more. We were picked up by the _Valentia_ on Thursday evening, and now it is Sunday morning."

"Everything seems to happen on a Sunday," said Maseden inconsequently; but Sturgess understood.

"Sunday is our day," he agreed. "Now, if you don't butt into the soliloquy, but show an intelligent interest by an occasional nod, I'll switch you on to the Information Bureau. The doc said I might, just to stop you from worrying.

"When an Indian with a spit lip got you with a stone at about five yards there were two coracles on each side of us. I suspicioned that the Thugs in them meant to spring aboard at the same time, which would have meant trouble, so it was up to me to spoil the combination. I shoved the helm hard over and drove into the two on the port side. Our heavy boat went through them as though they were jelly-fish, and the sudden rise of our starboard gunwale upset the calculations of the other crowd.

"Everybody, including you, rolled over with the sudden lurch, but Nina gathered herself together, grabbed your gun, stood straight on her feet, and said to me: 'Do you know which of these men hit Alec?' 'Yes,' I said, 'that joker with the criss-cross mouth. But you lie down. We're clear now.' Without another word she drew a steady bead on the stone-slinger and got him with the first shot.

"Then she attended to you. It seemed almost as though we had reached the limit, with you lying like dead, and me weak and sick, because the slingers gave me a couple to begin with, and the Indian girl screaming for all she was worth. Nina was just crooning over you like a mother nursing an ailing baby, so Madge came and took the tiller--not before time, as I didn't know enough to run with the wind again.

"We missed a howling reef by a hair's breadth--missed it only because the new course had taken us close inshore towards the north. Half an hour later we were in Smyth's Channel, and didn't know it, so we would have been sailing yet into the middle of the Andes if the _Valentia_ hadn't bumped around a corner. Since then we three have been setting the scene for you when you come on deck. The passengers are the right sort, every man and woman among 'em all wool and a yard wide. Tell you what, Alec--I'd better warn you--Nina and Madge have fixed up a star turn for you on your first appearance."

Sturgess paused to grin largely, so Maseden broke in with a question.

"Are we at sea now?" he inquired.

"No. We're anchored at Punta Arenas. The girls have gone ashore to see that Topsy is well fixed in a mission-house. The man who runs it came aboard for mail. He talks Topsy's lingo, so now we know why we happened on her. She broke her leg when one of half a dozen coracles was upset, and the brutes simply left her there to die, as they were in such a dashed hurry to go for the supposed loot of a wrecked ship. She will be all right here. I've attended to the financial side of it. They tell me that a hundred dollars will make her a great heiress."

"What about my name--Alexander?"

"Gee whiz! I was nearly forgetting. That was Nina's notion. She's real cute, that girl. She sized up the position in San Juan, and in case there might be any difficulty while the ship is in South American waters gave your name as Philip Alexander. She remembered that there was a Mr.

Alexander on board the _Southern Cross_, and it would be just silly to try and pass you off as a broncho-buster. No one gave any heed to your clothes. Our collective rig was so cubist or futurist, in general effect, that your _vaquero_ outfit passed with the rest.

"The skipper is about your size, and he has sent you a suit. The girls are buying linen and underclothes for all of us in Punta Arenas. I had no money, so instead of borrowing from the other people I went through your pants for five hundred dollars. You'll find a note with your wad, so that you can collect if I peg out before we find a bank."

Then Maseden laughed, and was heard by the doctor, who was coming along the gangway.