On awaking the second time I was still at a loss for the reason for my being at sea. I had left a port; I was going to a port; and I didn't know the name of either. I might have been on any ocean, sailing to any quarter of the globe. How long I had been on the way, and how far I had still to go, were details that danced away from me whenever I tried to seize them. I retained a knowledge of continents and countries; but as soon as I made the attempt to see myself in any of them my mind recoiled from the effort with a kind of sick dislike.
Nothing but a dull hint came to me on actually opening my eyes. An infiltration of gray light through the door, which was hooked ajar, revealed a mere slit in space, with every peg and corner utilized. A quiet breathing from the berth above my head told me that I shared the cabin with some one else. On the wall opposite, above a flat red couch piled with small articles of travel, two complete sets of clothing swung outward, or from side to side like pendulums, according to the movement of the ship.
I closed my eyes again. It was clearly a cabin of the cheaper and less comfortable order, calling up a faintly disagreeable surprise. It was from that that I drew my inference. I judged that whoever I was I had traveled before, and in more luxurious conditions.
Through the partly open door, beyond which there must have been an open porthole, came puffs of salt wind and the swish and roar of the ocean. Vainly I sought indications as to the point of the compass toward which we were headed. Imagination adapted itself instantly to any direction it was asked to take. In this inside cabin there was no suggestion from sun or cloud to show the difference between east and west.
Because I was not specially alarmed I did my best to doze again. Dozing seemed to me, indeed, the wisest course, for the reason that during the freedom of subconsciousness in sleep the missing connection was the more likely to be restored. It would be restored of course. I was physically well. I knew that by my general sensations. Young, vigorous, and with plenty of money, a mere lapse of memory was a joke.
Of being young and vigorous a touch on my body was enough to give me the assurance. The assumption of having plenty of money was more subtle. It was a habit of mind rather than anything more convincing. Certainly there was nothing to prove it in this cabin, which might easily have been second-class, nor yet in the stuff of my pajamas, which was thick and coarse. I noticed now, as I turned in my bunk, that it rasped my skin unpleasantly. With no effort of the memory I could see myself elegantly clad in silk night-clothing fastened with silk frogs; and yet when I asked myself when and where that had been no answer was accorded me.
I may have slept an hour when I waked again. From the sounds in the cabin I drew the conclusion that my overhead companion had got up.
Before looking at him I tested my memory for some such recollection as men sharing the same cabin have of their first meeting. But I had none. Farther back than that waking between five and six o'clock I couldn't think. It was like trying to think back to the years preceding one's birth; one's personality dissolved into darkness.
When I opened my eyes there was a man standing in the dim gray light with his back to me. Broad, muscular shoulders showed through the undershirt which was all he wore in addition to his trousers, of which the braces hung down the back. The dark hair was the hair of youth, and in a corner of the glass I caught the reflection of a chin which in spite of the lather I also knew to be young. Waiting till he had finished shaving and had splashed his face in the basin, I said, with a questioning intonation:
"Hello?"