"What?" exclaimed my neighbor. We had both risen to our feet, to stare at the metamorphosed Old Bill, but now we sat down, rather weak in the legs. I had the grace to motion our visitor to a chair.
"If you are the Reverend Franklin Mayhew," continued my neighbor, "did you once take passage in the bark Rangoon at Batavia, bound to Cape Town?"
"I did, and by my chronology it was but a month ago. The terrible scenes on board that vessel were the first things that came to my mind when I wakened in the hospital. Do you know anything about it? I want to know what happened to me."
"I do not know what happened to you, nor what happened to that crowd of mutineers. I was 'fore the mast in that bark, and remember you; but I have known you lately merely as a man-of-all-work around this building. I owe you a dollar for cleaning up my place"—our visitor raised his hand deprecatingly—"and we called you Bill. You couldn't remember your last name, nor very far back. You went crazy aboard that bark, Mr. Mayhew, and we put you ashore, still crazy, at Cape Town. I know nothing more."
"Nor does anyone else?" The look on his face was piteous.
"I doubt that you can gather up the threads. Why should you wish to? You must have lived a life of misery and hard labor. You were shocked into fainting by the sight of a picture, right here in this studio, and you have awakened to intelligence and mental activity."
"What picture?"
For answer I arose and wheeled the easel around so that the painting faced him. The effect upon him was more startling than had been the same experience upon my friend.
"Oh, God, help me!" he almost screamed. "God have mercy upon my soul! Why must it be perpetuated? Have I not suffered enough?" He covered his face with his hands, and with some misgiving I covered the picture with a cloth.
"That was it," he continued. "That was the last I remember on board that bark, and the first in the hospital the other day. I killed seven human beings—I, an ordained minister of the gospel!"