"By Jove!" cried Featherstone, "this is getting exciting. Let's go
back to the yacht and open it."

The men rowed back to the yacht.

"It's meat of some sort," continued the doctor. "I'm certain of that.
It has come in good time. We can have it for dinner."

"You may have my share, then," said Oxenden. "I hereby give and
bequeath to you all my right, title, and interest in and to anything
in the shape of meat that may be inside."

"Meat cans," said Melick, "are never so large as that."

"Oh, I don't know about that," said the doctor, "they make up pretty
large packages of pemmican for the arctic expeditions."

"But they never pack up pemmican in copper cylinders," said Melick,
who had been using his knife to scrape off the crust from the vessel.

"Copper!" exclaimed Oxenden. "Is it copper?"

"Look for yourselves," said Melick, quietly.

They all looked, and could see, where the knife had cut into the
vessel, that it was as he said. It was copper.

"It's foreign work," said Melick. "In England we make tin cans for
everything. It may be something that's drifted out from Mogadore or
some port in Morocco."