I silently assented with a faint smile.
“Perhaps”—he continued, “as we’re so near home, you’ll let me know your name? It’s not often we pick up a man alive and drifting in mid-Atlantic.”
In mid-Atlantic! What force had flung me there I dared not think, ... nor whether it was hellish or divine.
“My name?” I murmured, surprised into speech,—how odd it was I had never thought of myself lately as having a name or any other thing belonging to me!—“Why certainly! Geoffrey Tempest is my name.”
The captain’s eyes opened widely.
“Geoffrey Tempest! Dear me! ... The Mr Tempest?——the great millionaire that was?”
It was now my turn to stare.
“That was?” I repeated—“What do you mean?”
“Have you not heard?” he asked excitedly.
“Heard? I have heard nothing since I left England some months ago—with a friend, on board his yacht ... we went on a long voyage and ... a strange one! We were wrecked, ... you know the rest, and how I owe my life to your rescue. But of news I am ignorant ...”