‘What do they want to make out? That you’re from Greenland? I am trying to catch your accent. I have an A 1 ear for accents. I hoped at first you might be Lancashire, where I hail from. Then I fancied I could hear Derbyshire in you. But I reckon it’ll end in Middlesex’ he added thoughtfully; ‘that’s to say if London’s in Middlesex, which no man who goes to sea can be sure of, for every time he returns he wants a new chart, such is the growth of the little village. Does my talk give you any ideas?’ I shook my head. ‘Doesn’t the word London give you any idea?’
I thought and thought, and said, ‘It is a familiar word, but it suggests nothing.’
‘Curse the sea!’ he exclaimed, with an irritable twist of his head, as he looked round the horizon; ‘how ill it treats those who trust themselves to it! It robs you of memory, and it keeps me a poor man. Curse it, I say! I should like to know the name of the chap that was the first to go afloat. I’d burn him in effigy. But it’s some comfort to guess where his soul is. It wasn’t Noah. Noah had to save his life, and I allow he hated the sea as much as I do. All animals—pooh! but not worse than emigrants. And so you’ve lost your memory. And now what’s to bring it back to you, I wonder?’ He broke off to exclaim sharply to the helmsman and repeated, ‘What’s to bring it back to you, I wonder?’
He took a turn as though the remedy were in his mind and merely demanded a little thought. I watched him with deep anxiety. How could I tell but that even from him, that even from this man whom I had never before seen, with whom I was now discoursing in the heart of the ocean night, amid the silence of a faintly moonlit deck, with the sound of wind-brushed waters rising round about us, and the pale shadows of the leaning canvas soaring high above us—how could I tell but that even from this stranger might come the spark, the little leaping flame of suggestion to light up enough of my mind to enable me presently to see all? So I watched him with deep anxiety, whilst he took two or three turns.
Presently he halted facing me. He was a short man, scarcely as tall as I, square-built, and very firmly set on his legs. His hair appeared to be the colour of ginger. His chin was shaved, and he wore a bush of beard upon his throat. As much of his face as the moonlight silvered disclosed a dry, arch, sailorly expression.
‘It requires thinking over,’ said he. ‘My motto in physic is, Like cures like. What sent your memory adrift? You’ll find it was a shock. If the doctor would put you through a course of shocks you’d come out right. I’m a poor man, but I’d wager every farthing I’ll receive for the voyage, that if you were to fall overboard from the height of the ship’s side, when you were fished up you’d have your memory. Some sort of shock did the mischief, and any sort of shock’s going to undo it. That’s my belief. When McEwan visits you again you tell him what I say. Why, now, listen to this: an uncle of mine was so crippled with rheumatism and gout that he had to be carried like a dead-drunk man on a litter to the railway station. He was to consult some professional nob in London. With much backing and filling he was got into the railway carriage, and there he lay like a log, capable of moving nothing but his eyes. Half an hour after the train had started it ran into about forty waggons full of cattle. The bust-up was as usual: engine off the lines, driver in halves, the remains of the fireman in a ditch, several carriages matchwood, a dozen dead people under them, two-and-twenty persons wounded, and the country round about full of bleeding, galloping cattle. And who do you think was the first man to get out and run? My uncle. The collision cured him. He was a well man from the instant the locomotive bust into the waggons, and he has never known an ache since. It’s a shock that’s going to do your business, ma’m, take my word for it.’
I understood him imperfectly. Many of his allusions I did not in the least comprehend, yet I listened greedily, and for some moments after he had ceased I continued to hearken, hoping and hoping for some word, some hint, some suggestion that would help me to even the briefest inward glimpse.
Three silver chimes floated out of the deep shadow of the ship forward. ‘What are those bells?’ I asked.
‘Half-past one,’ he exclaimed; ‘and, with all respect, about time I think for you to be abed. The captain may come on deck at any moment, and if he finds you here he’ll be vexed that I have not before requested you to go below.’
I bade him good-night, but he accompanied me as far as the head of the steps which conducted to the quarterdeck.