If the last few minutes had inspired an eagerness for action in his own mind he saw at a glance that something equally exciting had possessed Celie Armin.  Spread out on the table were the bits of paper she had brought from her room, and, pointing to them, she again called him by name.  That she was laboring under a new and unusual emotion impressed him immediately.  He could see that she was fighting to restrain an impulse to pour out in words what would have been meaningless to him, and that she was telling him the bits of paper were to take the place of voice.  For one swift moment as he advanced to the table the papers meant less to him than the fact that she had twice spoken his name.  Her soft lips seemed to whisper it again as she pointed, and the look in her eyes and the poise of her body recalled to him vividly the picture of her as he had first seen her in the cabin.  He looked at the bits of paper.  There were fifteen or twenty pieces, and on each was sketched a picture.

He heard a low catch in Celie’s breath as he bent over them, and his own pulse quickened.  A glance was sufficient to show him that with the pictures Celie was trying to tell him what he wanted to know.  They told her own story—­who she was, why she was at Bram Johnson’s cabin, and how she had come.  This, at least, was the first thought that impressed him.  He observed then that the bits of paper were soiled and worn as though they had been handled a great deal.  He made no effort to restrain the exclamation that followed this discovery.

“You drew these pictures for Bram,” he scanning them more carefully.  “That settles one thing.  Bram doesn’t know much more about you than, I do.  Ships, and dogs, and men—­and fighting—­a lot of fighting—­and—­”

His eyes stopped at one of the pictures and his heart gave a sudden excited thump.  He picked up the bit of paper which had evidently been part of a small sack.  Slowly he turned to the girl and met her eyes.  She was trembling in her eagerness for him to understand.

“That is you,” he said, tapping the central figure in the sketch, and nodding at her.  “You—­with your hair down, and fighting a bunch of men who look as though they were about to beat your brains out with clubs!  Now—­what in God’s name does it mean?  And here’s a ship up in the corner.  That evidently came first.  You landed from that ship, didn’t you?  From the ship—­the ship—­the ship—­”

“Skunnert!” she cried softly, touching the ship with her finger.  “Skunnert—­Sibirien!”

“Schooner-Siberia,” translated Philip.  “It sounds mightily like that, Celie.  Look here—­” He opened his pocket atlas again at the map of the world.  “Where did you start from, and where did you come ashore?  If we can get at the beginning of the thing—­”