picked up is Noble's Isle, a small volcanic islet and uninhabited.
It was visited in 1891 by H. M. S. Scorpion. A party of sailors
then landed, but found nothing living thereon except certain curious
white moths, some hogs and rabbits, and some rather peculiar rats.
So that this narrative is without confirmation in its most
essential particular. With that understood, there seems no harm
in putting this strange story before the public in accordance,
as I believe, with my uncle's intentions. There is at least this
much in its behalf: my uncle passed out of human knowledge about
latitude 5 degrees S. and longitude 105 degrees E., and reappeared
in the same part of the ocean after a space of eleven months.
In some way he must have lived during the interval. And it seems that
a schooner called the Ipecacuanha with a drunken captain, John Davies,
did start from Africa with a puma and certain other animals aboard
in January, 1887, that the vessel was well known at several ports
in the South Pacific, and that it finally disappeared from those seas
(with a considerable amount of copra aboard), sailing to its unknown
fate from Bayna in December, 1887, a date that tallies entirely with my
uncle's story.

CHARLES EDWARD PRENDICK.

(The Story written by Edward Prendick.)




I. IN THE DINGEY OF THE "LADY VAIN."