It turned out, indeed, to be the Jeanne D’Arc, as Jim proved for himself the next day, and he was lying in the seamen’s quarters in the fo’cas’le.  By morning he felt much better, hungry, and prepared in his mind for striking a bargain with one of the sailors for clothes.  He could make out their lingo soon, he guessed, and then he would get a suit of clothes and fare on deck.  Suddenly he grasped his waist, struck with an unpleasant thought; his money-belt was gone!  He was wearing a sailor’s blue flannel shirt and nothing else.  He turned over on his hard bunk, thinking that he would have to wait a while before making his entrance on the public stage of the Jeanne D’Arc.

And wait he did.  Not a rag of clothing was in sight, and no cajolery or promise of reward could persuade the ship’s men into supplying his need.  He received consignments of food; short rations they would be, he judged, for an able-bodied seaman.  But inactivity and confinement to the fo’cas’le soon worked havoc with his physique, so that appetite, and even desire of life itself, temporarily disappeared in the gloom of seasickness.

In spite of difficulties, Jim tried to find out something about the boat.  The seamen were none too friendly; but by patching up his almost forgotten French and by signs, he learned something.  His sudden failure of strength in the water had been due to a blow from a floating spar, as a bruise on his forehead testified; “the old man,” whom Jim supposed to be the captain, was a hard master; Monsieur Chatelard was owner, or at least temporary proprietor, of the yacht; and the present voyage was an unlucky one by all the signs and omens known to the seamen’s horoscope.

The sullenness of the men was apparent, and was not caused by the enforced presence of a stranger among them.  In fact, their bad temper became so conspicuous that Jim began to believe that it might have something to do with the mysterious actions of the man on shore.  He pondered the situation deeply; he evolved many foolish schemes to compass his own enlightenment, and dismissed them one by one.  He grimly reflected that a man without clothes can scarcely be a hero, whatever his spirit.  Not since the days of Olympus was there any record of man or god being received into any society whatever without his sartorial shell, thought Jimmy.  But in spite of his discomfort, he was glad he was there.  The intuition that had led him since that memorable Sunday afternoon was strong within him still, and he never questioned its authority.  He believed his turn would come, even though he were a prisoner in the fo’cas’le of the Jeanne D’Arc.

As the violence of his sickness passed, Jim began to cast about for some means of helping himself.  Gradually he was able to dive into the forgotten shallows of his French learning.  By much wrinkling of brows he evolved a sentence, though he had to wait some hours before there was a favorable chance to put it to use.  At last his time came, with the arrival of his former friend, the sailor.