"But what became of you after that night—after the Yakutat was lost?" she asked.
"I don't know, nurse. I don't know. It was just a year ago that I woke up."
The last anchorage of her hope went with that. It was but a maundering tale, after all. Or else her senses were tricking her and she had imagined that he had said these things about Paul and her mother and father and the Yakutat!
"It all came back to me," the derelict went on wearily—"twelve years of my loife. I was in th' seamen's Bethel in Hong Kong—just a year gone. An' out av a 'Frisco paper I spelled that th' Lavelle av th' Yakutat—'Th' Prince's' bhoy—was gone—lost in a tramp off Rangoon. Like th' loightnin' sthrikes th' twilve lost year come back. Says I, 'I'm Daniel McGovern.' Whin I was afther tellin' th' sky pilot he wint an' tol' th' docthors all about it. Th' newspapers printed it. Whin th' Yakutat's boat wint over somethin' struck me head. A whale ship picked me up. 'Th' Prince's' boy niver knew I'd served with his father. All th' thrubble in me head shtarted before I j'ined th' Yakutat. I was afther fallin' from th' tawps'l yard av some ship. Her name—I can't raymimber where 'twas or what ship 'twas. I tould Elston about it—fine lad he was—an he laughed at me till I give him th' piece out av th' Hong Kong newspaper. He laughed——I'll be afther shlapin', shlapin', nurse. I'll be——"
Daniel McGovern's eyes closed. He seemed very weak. For a second Emily feared that he was dying. Then, her abiding faith in the justice of things renewed her.
"He mustn't die, God—not yet, not yet," she pleaded in a whisper.
She ran from the derelict's room into the mate's. Earlier in the evening she had found on Elston's desk a book—a half-filled diary—from which she had torn a page upon which to write. She carried this book and pen and inkwell back to McGovern's room. She would reduce McGovern's story to writing and make him swear to it. As she spread the book open upon a chair and knelt beside it to write a newspaper clipping fluttered out from its pages. A glance confirmed the truth of all the derelict had said about his strange lapse of memory:
Lost His Identity for Thirteen Years.
Word in a Newspaper Restores the Memory of a Man Who Had Forgotten Who He Was.
Thus ran the headlines. To Emily Granville they were written in fire.
The cabin clock struck seven bells—11:30—but she did not hear it. Oblivious to all else save her task and the flickering life in the berth at her side she began to write a statement of all McGovern had said. She felt that it was in her to stay death until the derelict had signed it.