‘The lady may have been blown from a French port,’ said Mr. McEwan.
‘What French port?’ inquired the captain, moving the chart that the surgeon might see it.
‘I have an idea!’ said Mr. McEwan; ‘why must the lady have been blown from a port at all? And why should the boat in which she was discovered necessarily have been a pleasure-boat? Who’s to say that she is not the sole survivor of some disastrous shipwreck? In that case she may have been coming home from the other side of the world. There’s more happened to her, Captain Ladmore,’ said he, speaking with his eyes fixed upon me, ‘than is to be occasioned by misadventure during a pleasure cruise.’
‘Cannot you describe the boat?’ said the captain to me.
‘The Frenchman told me that she was an open boat and that she had two masts,’ I answered.
‘Did they notice no more of her than that?’
‘No. She was entangled with the rigging and drove along with the brig for a short distance. She broke away after I had been taken out of her, and the Frenchman let her go. It was a little before daybreak, and there was scarcely any light to see by.’
‘You remember all that!’ exclaimed Mr. McEwan.
‘I remember everything that the Frenchman told me,’ I answered; ‘and I can remember everything that has happened from the hour of my returning to consciousness on board the brig.’