hair staring at me over the bulwarks. I also had a disconnected
impression of a dark face, with extraordinary eyes, close to mine;
but that I thought was a nightmare, until I met it again.
I fancy I recollect some stuff being poured in between my teeth;
and that is all.




II. THE MAN WHO WAS GOING NOWHERE.


THE cabin in which I found myself was small and rather untidy.
A youngish man with flaxen hair, a bristly straw-coloured moustache,
and a dropping nether lip, was sitting and holding my wrist.
For a minute we stared at each other without speaking.
He had watery grey eyes, oddly void of expression.
Then just overhead came a sound like an iron bedstead being
knocked about, and the low angry growling of some large animal.
At the same time the man spoke. He repeated his question,--"How do you
feel now?"

I think I said I felt all right. I could not recollect how I
had got there. He must have seen the question in my face,
for my voice was inaccessible to me.

"You were picked up in a boat, starving. The name on the boat
was the 'Lady Vain,' and there were spots of blood on the gunwale."

At the same time my eye caught my hand, so thin that it looked