"Certainly; and your name, what is it?"

"Olbinett."

"Well, Olbinett, my friend, we must think of breakfast, and that
pretty quickly. It is thirty-six hours since I have had anything
to eat, or rather thirty-six hours that I have been asleep--
pardonable enough in a man who came all the way, without stopping,
from Paris to Glasgow. What is the breakfast hour?"

"Nine o'clock," replied Olbinett, mechanically.

The stranger tried to pull out his watch to see the time;
but it was not till he had rummaged through the ninth pocket
that he found it.

"Ah, well," he said, "it is only eight o'clock at present.
Fetch me a glass of sherry and a biscuit while I am waiting,
for I am actually falling through sheer inanition."

Olbinett heard him without understanding what he meant for the voluble
stranger kept on talking incessantly, flying from one subject to another.

"The captain? Isn't the captain up yet? And the chief officer?
What is he doing? Is he asleep still? It is fine weather, fortunately,
and the wind is favorable, and the ship goes all alone."

Just at that moment John Mangles appeared at the top of the stairs.