“Is not this a brig called the Black Watch,” said I, “and are not you, Captain Michael Greaves, in command of her?”
“Chaw! I see how it is,” he exclaimed, the wonder going out of his face while he let go of my hammock. “You have had what they call lucid intervals, during which you have picked up my name and the name of my vessel—though who the deuce has visited you saving me and the lad? and neither of us, I swear, has ever once found you conscious until just now.”
“Will you give me some more brandy-and-water? I am still very thirsty. A second draught may enable me to converse. I feel very weak, but I do not think I am as weak as I was a little while ago;” and I lifted my head to test my strength, and found that I was able to look over the edge of the hammock.
In doing this I got a view of Captain Michael Greaves’ figure. He was a square, tall, well-built man—as tall as I, but more nobly framed; his face, his shape, his air expressed great decision and resolution of character. He wore a pea-coat that fell to his knees, and this coat and a pair of immense sea-boots and a fur cap formed his visible apparel. He stepped out of the berth, and in a minute after returned with a glass of brandy-and-water. This I took down almost as greedily as I had emptied the contents of the first glass. I thanked him, handed him the tumbler, and said:
“You were chief mate of a ship called the Raja?”
“That is so.”
“In the month of November, 1809, you were lying in Table Bay?”
He reflected, and then repeated:
“That is so.”
“There was a ship,” I continued, “called the Rainbow, that lay astern of you by some ten ships’-lengths.”