‘No, I do not remember,’ I answered, biting my lip, whilst I was sensible that my inward struggle and agitation was causing me to frown.
The two gentlemen exchanged looks. ‘I need not inquire whether you are English,’ said the captain; ‘your accent assures me on that head. And forgive me for saying that no one could hear you speak without being satisfied as to your station in life. Let me see if I can help your memory: you are a lady who in all probability engaged a pleasure boat to take a cruise in, and you were venturesome enough to go alone. The boat proved too much for you and she ran away with you. Or, dirty weather came on and blew you out of sight of land.’
I listened to him with my eyes fastened upon the deck, greedily devouring his speech; but all remained dark. I hearkened and I understood him, and I believed that it might be as he had said, but I could not say that it was so. No! no more indeed than had he been telling me the experience of another of whom I had never heard.
‘In what part was your boat fallen in with?’ he asked after a pause.
‘I cannot tell.’
‘How long were you on board the brig?’
This question I could answer. He rose and took a chart from a corner of the cabin, and then sat again with his finger upon the open chart.
‘Concede an average of sixty miles a day to that brig,’ said he, addressing Mr. McEwan. ‘Her weather will have been ours, and we may take it that her average will not have exceeded sixty miles a day in the time during which the lady was aboard her.’ His lips moved as he calculated to himself, and then, passing his finger over the chart, he said: ‘The situation of the open boat when the French brig fell in with her would be about——’ and he indicated the place by stating the latitude and longitude of it.
‘That’ll be clear of the Chops, captain,’ said Mr. McEwan, ‘and at that, though the lady may hail from England, she never can have sailed from that country.’
‘It certainly would be a prodigious drift for a small boat,’ said the captain, looking at the chart and speaking in a musing way. ‘It should signify a week’s drift, unless the boat kept her stern to it with all sail set. Perhaps I do not allow enough for the brig’s average run.’