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Out in the bay, bobbing to the heave of the slight ground-swell, were the three white buoys left by the Spaniards to mark the sunken boats and slipped cable; and far away on the beach, just within the western point, was something long and round, which rolled in the gentle surf and glistened in the sunlight. He knew nothing of buoys, but they relieved his loneliness; they were signs of human beings, who must have placed him there with the bread and water, and who might come for him.

“Wonder if I got pinched again, and this is some new kind of a choky,” he mused. “Been blamed sick and silly, and must ha’ lost the job and got jailed again. Just my luck! S’pose the jug was crowded and they run me out here. Wish they’d left me a hat. Wonder how long I’m in for this time.”

He descended to the beach and found that repeated wettings of his hair relieved him from the headache that the sun’s heat was bringing on; and satisfied that the strong hand of local law had again closed over him, he resigned himself to the situation, resenting only the absence of a shade-tree or a hat. “Much better ‘n the calaboose in El Paso,” he muttered, “or the brickyard in Chicago.”

As he lolled on the sand, the glistening thing over at the western point again caught his eye. After a moment’s scrutiny he rose and limped toward it, following the concave of the beach, and often pausing to rest and bathe his head. It was a long journey for him, and the tide, at half-ebb when he started, was rising again when he came abreast of the object and sat down to look at it. It was of metal, long and round, rolling nearly submerged, and held by the alternate surf and undertow parallel with the beach, about twenty feet out.

He waded in, grasped it by a T-shaped projection in the middle, and headed it toward the shore. Then he launched it forward with all his strength–not much, but enough to lift a bluntly pointed end out of water as it grounded and exposed a small, four-bladed steel wheel, shaped something like a windmill. He examined this, but could not understand it, as it whirled freely either way and seemed to have no internal connection. The strange cylinder was about sixteen feet long and about eighteen inches in diameter.

“Boat o’ some kind,” he muttered; “but what kind? That screw’s too small to make it go. Let’s see the other end.”

He launched it with difficulty, and noticed that when floating end on to the surf it ceased to roll and kept the T-shaped projection uppermost, proving that it was ballasted. Swinging it, he grounded the other end, which was radically different in appearance. It was long and finely pointed, with four steel blades or vanes, two horizontal and two vertical,–like the double tails of an ideal fish,–and in hollowed parts of these vanes were hung a pair of unmistakable propellers, one behind the other, and of opposite pitch and motion.

“One works on the shaft, t’ other on a sleeve,” he mused, as he turned them. “A roundhouse wiper could see that. Bevel-gearin’ inside, I guess. It’s a boat, sure enough, and this reverse action must be to keep her from rolling.”

On each of the four vanes he found a small blade, showing by its connection that it possessed range of action, yet immovable as the vane itself, as though held firmly by inner leverage. Those on the horizontal vanes were tilted upward. Just abaft the T-shaped projection–which, fastened firmly to the hull, told him nothing of its purpose–were numerous brass posts buried flush with the surface, in each of which was a square hole, as though intended to be turned with a key or crank. Some were marked with radiating lines and numbers, and they evidently controlled the inner mechanism, part of which he could see–little brass cog-wheels, worms, and levers–through a fore-and-aft slot near the keyholes.