We mobbed Swansen, but it did not help the case; Devlin remained an imbecile until we reached port, where he went to a hospital.
So, with our spirits clouded, we were glad to quit that good ship at Sydney, and separate, each going his own way. Mine led to other voyages until, as I have said, I quit the sea to work on shore; then, on through my struggles for a livelihood to the time of my mental breakdown; and I even remembered and lived the experience of the night at the theater and my visit to the hypnotist. And then I awoke, to find him standing over me, making passes upward and over my head.
"Well," he said, as I glanced confusedly around the room, "how do you feel?"
"Feel?" I answered. "Why, professor, I've dreamed of my whole life—only, it is fading away. Let me think. The ship—Swansen—the squall—no, it is going. I cannot remember. I cannot."
"Go home," he said kindly, "and sleep all you can. Each morning will bring back fresh recollections, and in time your memory will be thoroughly restored."
He was right. Next morning I recalled the incidents of my boyhood and my early seafaring experience, culminating in my signing able seaman in the Chariot. And as I viewed my face in the glass, I marveled at the change; I knew it as my face, and remembered it, but now remembered the face of my youth, which gave no promise of the worn and wasted features in the glass.
Yet the following morning brought back more recollections of that voyage, and the next and the next still more, until at the end of a week I could review my past, perhaps with a keener memory than that of the ordinary man who has tired his brain and memory without the relief that had come to me. I called down blessings upon the head of that hypnotist, and in my gladness of heart thought of the poor devil in Bellevue Hospital, and went to see him.
But I was not admitted. I was not acquainted with him, and had no plausible excuse for wishing to see him. So I went to Sullivan, my old shipmate, and explained the case, at the same time telling him of my wonderful cure, and my wish to secure to him the services of the kindly man who had served me.
"Won't let you in?" he cried. "I'll see about that. Just come along wi' me up to Tammany Hall, an' I'll see if a fri'nd o' Jack Sullivan is to be barred out of any public institution in this burg."
We started, and as our way led past the apartment of the professor, I suggested that we stop and endeavor to take him along, as, if all went well, the thing could be done in a few moments.