She led me to a narrow staircase at the end of the corridor. I heard the voice of people at breakfast at the tables behind me, but I held my head bowed and saw nothing. We mounted the staircase and emerged at the aftermost end of the brilliant saloon, that was filled with the hum and busy with the clinking and clattering noises of passengers talking and lingering at the breakfast table. The stewardess knocked on the cabin door, and without waiting for a reply opened it, and we entered.
Two gentlemen arose from their chairs as I stepped in, and the stewardess, going up to one of them, said quickly but audibly, ‘She has lost her memory, sir,’ and so saying went out, giving me a smile as she passed.
The cabin into which I had been introduced was large and cheerful. It was furnished as a private sitting-room. On a table were a number of mathematical instruments; the deck was handsomely carpeted, and but for the movement to be felt, and but for one or two points of sea equipment, such as a silver telescope in a bracket and a sleeping-place or bunk that closed as though it were a horizontal cupboard, it would have been hard to imagine in this fresh, shining, comfortably furnished room that you were upon the ocean.
One of the gentlemen was the tall man who had been accosted by the young officer on our arrival. He was a very fine figure of a man indeed, above six feet tall and proportionately broad. His age was probably fifty, his complexion fresh, his eyes blue and kindly. There was but little of the look of the sailor, as we are taught by books to imagine him, in this man. With his grey whiskers, black-satin cravat, and dignified air, he might very well have passed for a well-to-do City banker or a country squire.
His companion on the other hand was a short man with sandy hair streaked with grey, and a dry, shrewd Scotch face. He was dressed in a suit of tweed, and I recollect that his boots resembled a pair of shovels, so square-toed were they.
‘I am happy,’ said the tall gentleman, in a slow, mild voice, after glancing at me with a mingled expression of pity and anxiety, ‘to have been the instrument of delivering you from a terrible fate.’ He placed a chair for me. ‘Pray be seated. My name is Ladmore—Captain Frederick Ladmore, and I am in command of this ship, the Deal Castle. This gentleman is Mr. McEwan, the ship’s surgeon.’
‘Who strapped your forehead up, may I ask?’ said Mr. McEwan, in a strong accent incommunicable by the pen, and he came close to me and stared at the plaister.
‘A young Frenchman who belonged to the vessel from which you rescued me,’ I answered.
‘And a young ’un he must have been,’ said Mr. McEwan, with a smile which disclosed gums containing scarcely more than four front teeth. ‘How did he lay those strips on, ma’m? With a trowel?’
‘You seem to have been badly hurt,’ said Captain Ladmore compassionately.