CAPTAIN FREDERICK LADMORE
A respectable-looking, pale-faced woman, attired in black, stood at
the head of a staircase that descended through a large hatch in the
forward part of this saloon. The young officer went up to her and said,
‘Mrs. Richards, we have just brought this poor lady off from the brig
that was run down last night. The captain requests that you will take
her below and make her comfortable. She has been locked up--think of
it, Mrs. Richards--she has been locked up all night, without food or
drink, in the berth of a craft that I dare say she supposed at any
moment might sink under her feet. When you have thoroughly refreshed
yourself,’ he exclaimed, addressing me, ‘the captain will be happy to
see you.’
‘I think you had better come to my berth,’ said the person whom the
young mate had called Mrs. Richards.
‘May I ask who you are?’ said I.
‘I am the stewardess,’ she answered.
She then conducted me down the stairs into what I afterwards learnt was
called the steerage. It was a part of the ship that corresponded with
the saloon, only it was not so broad, and there were but two tables
in the central passage or corridor. As in the saloon so here, there
were berths or sleeping compartments ranged on either hand, but these
quarters compared with the saloon were gloomy, and I do not remember
how daylight was obtained to illuminate the place; yet one could see
fairly well even when fresh from the glare of the deck.
The stewardess, opening a cabin door at the after end of the wide
passage, bade me step in, and I found myself in a plain but comfortable
little cabin, lighted by a large porthole, and furnished with two
mahogany sleeping shelves one above the other. Upon a table were one or
two account-books and a number of papers on files.
‘Please to sit down, ma’m,’ said the stewardess, speaking kindly. ‘You
look very weak and ill. Only fancy being locked up all night in that
sinking boat! You are English?---- Yes, the third officer addressed
you in English, and yet you may be French. Let me help you to take off
that heavy cloak. It is a man’s cloak and a handsome one, I declare. I
suppose you snatched at the first thing you could see to wrap yourself
up in when our ship struck yours?’
She paused in her speech to hang up the cloak, and then surveyed me
for a few moments in silence. I particularly observed that she ran
her eye with an expression of surprise over my figure, as though she
could not reconcile my white hair and withered face with my youthful
shape. You will not require me to tell you that I was dressed in the
plain, tight-fitting serge costume that I had worn when I made my last
excursion with the boatman Hitchens. It had not suffered much from
exposure, nor from the rude wear to which it had been subjected. It
looked fairly fresh, and at any time I should have thought it still a
wearable, serviceable dress.
‘You appear to have hurt your head very badly,’ said the stewardess.
‘But the injury does not seem fresh--the plaister is surely older than
last night?’
‘Oh yes,’ I answered.
‘But questioning you is not carrying out the captain’s orders, is it?’
said she cheerfully. ‘Now what shall I get you? What could you fancy?
Would you like a plate of chicken and ham and a fresh crisp roll hot
from the oven and a cup of hot coffee?’
I thanked her. She then pointed to a little fixed washstand in the
corner, and told me to make use of her hair-brushes and whatever else I
might require, and she then left me.
A square looking-glass hung over the washstand. I approached and
looked into it and then shrunk from it. Oh! I could not wonder that
the people in this ship had stared when I came on board. My white
hair that had been thinned by every application of the brush fell
raggedly down my back and upon my shoulders. My sallow complexion was
rendered peculiarly sickly by the pallor that had been put into it by
my sufferings during the night. The plaister was no longer white,
but soiled, and when for the second time I looked at my face, I again
shrank back and the old blind cry of my heart, _Who am I?_ rose dumbly
to my lips.
I sank trembling into a chair, and the words ‘Oh God!’ broke from me.
But the word ‘God’ was no more than the echo of a sound, whose meaning
was eclipsed. Again and again, and yet again, in my agony I had uttered
that holy Name, but with no more sense of the meaning than the babe has
when its tiny lips frame the syllables ‘ma-ma.’
After waiting a little I poured out some water and washed my hands and
face, and I then brushed my hair, but I observed that not so many hairs
came away in the bristles as heretofore. I seated myself again and
looked around me, and with kindling interest at the little furniture
in the stewardess’s berth. Near me hung a framed photograph of two
children, a boy and a girl, and close by it hung another photograph of
a respectably-dressed young woman in a bonnet, with an infant of a few
months old on her knee. At these things I stared, and there followed
an inward struggle that made me frown as I looked, and bite my lip and
pluck at my dress with my fingers.
There were other photographs of grown-up people. I glanced at them, and
at a little row of books, and at a work-basket, and at similar trivial
details. But my eyes went quickly back to the portraits of the two
children and the little baby, and I was still gazing at them when the
stewardess entered, bearing my breakfast.
‘Who are those children?’ I asked her.
‘My little nephew and niece,’ she answered, smiling and lighting up
as she spoke, ‘and that is my only sister with her first-born on her
lap. Oh, such a little cherub as it is! The sweetest baby! One, only
one did I have. He was sweeter, yes, even sweeter than that child,’ she
added, her gaze lingering upon the photograph whilst her voice fell
and her face grew grave. ‘I lost him three months after my husband
died----after he died and left me to ---- to ----. But here is your
breakfast now. Make a good meal. I am sure you need it.’
How much I needed it I did not know until I began to eat. I ate in
silence, and the stewardess did not interrupt me by speech. She moved
here and there, but all the while I was sensible that she eyed me
furtively. When I had finished she said:
‘Do you feel equal to seeing the captain? Or would you rather lie down
and take some rest? You look as if you needed a long sleep.’
‘Is the captain waiting to see me?’ I asked.
She drew out her watch. ‘He wishes to see you after breakfast, and the
passengers will assemble at breakfast in a few minutes. Unless you feel
very exhausted it might be as well that you should see him before you
lie down. He will want to know where you come from, so as to be able to
send you to your friends at the first opportunity. And then again you
will wish to see the doctor? You must have been badly hurt to need so
many straps about your head.’
‘I do not feel exhausted,’ I answered. ‘This meal has greatly
strengthened and refreshed me. I will sit here, if you please, until
the captain is ready to see me.’
‘I shall not be able to sit with you,’ said the stewardess. ‘My hands
are very full. We are not long from port, and some of my ladies have
not yet overcome their sea-sickness. And then I have a sweet, poor
young lady to see after. She is very ill of consumption. I fear she
will not live. Her mother is taking her on a voyage round the world,
but, like most people who are ill of consumption, the young lady has
started too late. At least, I fear so. I have seen too many instances
in my time not to fear so.’
‘Will you tell me,’ said I, ‘where this ship is going to?’
‘To Sydney,’ said she, pausing with her hand upon the door. She
continued to watch me for a few moments, and then with a smile said,
‘You know where Sydney is?’ I held my eyes bent downwards. ‘It is in
Australia,’ said she; ‘in New South Wales. It is a beautiful city, and
most people think that its harbour is the loveliest in the world.’
She opened the door, gave me a friendly nod, and passed out.
I remained seated, lost in such recent and slender thought as my mind
could find to deal with. The ship was moving through the water. I could
tell that by the tremble and hurry of light on the thick glass of the
closed port. The movement was regular, buoyant, and wonderfully easy
after the convulsive motions of the little brig. There was a clatter
of crockery and subdued noise of talk outside in the somewhat darksome
corridor, as I may call it, where some people--those no doubt who
lodged in this part of the ship--were at breakfast. A baby was faintly
crying in an adjacent cabin, but the compartments were stoutly divided,
and every note reached the ear dimly. I sat thinking, and I thought of
the terrible night I had passed, and of my abandonment by the young
Frenchman and his companions, and also of the kind treatment I had met
with on board the little French brig, and I thought of the days I had
spent in her, and how the young Frenchman had said they had found me
lying insensible, wounded, and bleeding in a boat with two masts; and,
one thought leading to another, I suddenly arose and stepped to the
looking-glass and gazed into it, and whilst I was staring at myself the
door opened and the stewardess entered.
‘I have just left the captain,’ said she, ‘and he will be glad to see
you in his cabin if you are equal to the visit.’
‘There are people about,’ I answered; ‘my face is--this plaister----’ I
put my hand to my brow, at a loss to express myself. I was ashamed to
be seen, yet I was not able to say so.
‘You look nicely--oh, you look nicely!’ exclaimed the stewardess
cordially. ‘Consider what you have gone through. How many would look
so well after being wounded as you have, and then locked up in a cabin
all night in a sinking ship? But you will not be seen. There is a
staircase at the end of this steerage, and it opens close against the
cabin door. Come, dear lady!’
She was about to lead the way out when she stopped and said, ‘What name
shall I give when I show you in?’
‘I do not know,’ I answered.
She stared and looked frightened.
‘I have lost my memory,’ I said, and as I pronounced the words, I
clasped my hands and bowed my head and sobbed.
‘Ah, poor lady! God keep your heart! You have passed through a great
deal surely,’ said the kindly creature instantly, with a woman’s
sympathetic perception, witnessing the truth of my assurance and
understanding my condition, and, tenderly taking my arm in her hand,
she conducted me out of the berth.
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.
‘No, no, captain,’ interrupted Mr. McEwan, ‘never make too much of a
woman’s troubles or complaints. There’s nothing to fret over unless the
bridge of the nose be a trifle indented.’
‘How did it happen?’ inquired the captain.
‘I was found in an open boat, lying insensible, with the mast of the
boat across my face.’
‘Oh! you were found in an open boat. By whom?’ inquired the captain.
‘By the people belonging to the French brig.’
‘Now I understand,’ said the captain. ‘I thought you might have
been--in fact, it puzzled me to know what you were doing on board that
little craft. How long were you in the open boat?’
‘I do not know.’
‘What sort of boat was she?’
‘I cannot remember.’
‘But you surely remember how it happened that you were in that boat,
and also how it happened that you were alone in her when rescued?’
‘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.’
‘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.’
‘Would not a ship’s quarter-boat have two masts, captain?’ said Mr.
McEwan. ‘Ye must know it is my theory that ’tis a case of shipwreck,
and that this lady may be the only survivor. Who can tell?’
‘I have known a ship’s long-boat with two masts,’ answered Captain
Ladmore, ‘but I never heard of a quarter-boat so rigged.’
‘Then the boat that the Frenchman fell in with may have been a
long-boat,’ said the surgeon.
‘I wish to find out all about you,’ said the captain gravely and
quietly, glancing at my bare hands and then running his eyes over my
dress, ‘that I may be able to send you home. A home you must have--but
where? Cannot you tell me that it is in England?’
I looked at him, and my swimming eyes sank. I could not speak.
‘This is sad indeed,’ said he. ‘Did you ever hear of so complete a
failure of memory, McEwan?’
‘Oh yes,’ answered the surgeon. ‘I’ll show you fifty examples of utter
failure in a book on the brain which I have in my cabin, and I can give
you half a dozen instances at least out of my own experience. At the
same time,’ he continued, speaking as though I were not present, ‘this
case is peculiar and impressive. But I should regard it as hopeful
on the whole because, ye see, there’s the capacity of recollecting
everything on this side of whatever it may be that occasioned the loss.’
‘Did the Frenchman find nothing in the boat?’ asked the captain gently.
‘Nothing,’ I replied, ‘except a straw hat that was crushed by the fall
of the mast, and stained by my wounds.’
‘It was your hat?’
‘They thought so,’ I answered.
‘Nothing more?’ said he, ‘merely a straw hat? But then to be sure it
was in the dark of the morning, and they were able to see nothing
more.’
He rose from his chair and took several turns about the cabin;
meanwhile Mr. McEwan steadfastly regarded me. His air was one of
professional curiosity. At last his scrutiny grew painful, but he did
not relax it, though my uneasiness must have been clear to him.
‘Can you give me any idea,’ said the captain, ‘of what became of the
French crew?’
‘I cannot,’ I replied.
‘It was barbarous of them to leave you on board a vessel which they
believed was sinking, or they would not have quitted her.’
‘I was kindly treated by them,’ I answered. One of them, a young
Frenchman, endeavoured to release me that I might gain the deck. But he
could not move the cask that was jammed between my door and the steps.
His uncle, the captain, threatened to leave him behind. The young man
would have saved me could he have procured help.’
‘That’s how it always is in a panic at sea,’ said the captain,
addressing Mr. McEwan. ‘I can tell you exactly how it happened with
those foreigners. When the brig was struck the seamen supposed that she
would instantly founder. They launched the boat, probably their only
boat.’
‘They had but one boat,’ I said.
‘Just so,’ exclaimed the captain; ‘they launched their only boat, and
then as they lay alongside they shouted to their skipper that if he
delayed they would leave him. No man has a chance with a cowardly crew
at such a time. I dare say, had it depended upon the French captain
and his nephew, you would have been brought on deck and taken into the
boat. But well for you, poor lady, that they did not stay to release
you! They blew away in the blackness, and in such a sea as was running
it is fifty to one if the boat was not capsized.’
‘Are there no initials upon your linen, ma’m?’ inquired the surgeon.
I produced from my pocket the handkerchief which the young Frenchman
had examined, and handed it to the surgeon, saying, ‘This was in my
pocket when I was rescued, and it must therefore be mine. The letters
“A. C.” are upon it. My under-linen is similarly marked.’
He looked at the initials, and then passed the handkerchief to the
captain.
‘Do not the letters suggest your name to you?’ said the surgeon. I
shook my head. ‘Would you know your name if I were to pronounce it,
d’ye think?’
‘I cannot say.’
‘Have you run over any names for yourself?’
‘I cannot think of any names to run over,’ said I.
‘Ha!’ exclaimed the captain, ‘how great, how awful is the mystery of
life, is the mystery of the mind!’ and as though overcome he stepped
to the porthole and seemed to look out, keeping his back upon us. Mr.
McEwan continued to scrutinise me.
‘Captain,’ he suddenly exclaimed again, speaking as though I were deaf
or absent, ‘the lady’s hair is snow white, d’ye mark? Her hair, as we
see it, doesn’t correspond with her figure. She’s much younger than
the colour of her hair. She is much younger than the look of her face,
captain. She’s a young woman that has been suddenly aged--to the sight.
I can see the youth of her lurking under her countenance, like comely
lineaments under a veil. As she recovers strength and health, her bloom
will return.’ He turned to me. ‘When you entered the boat in which you
were found insensible, your hair, m’am, was black.’
‘But all this is not to the point, McEwan,’ exclaimed the captain,
coming from the porthole before which he had been standing with his
back upon us. ‘The question is, where does this lady live? Has she
friends in England. If so, it is my duty to send her home by the first
ship. But your memory,’ said he to me, ‘may return in a day or two, and
we are not acting kindly in detaining you from the rest which I am sure
you need after such a night as you have endured.’
He opened the door of his cabin, and called to one of the stewards to
send Mrs. Richards to him.
‘You’ll forgive me, ma’m,’ said Mr. McEwan, ‘but I observe that you
have no rings. Now I’m sure you must have had rings on when you were
found in the boat. Were they stolen from you, d’ye think?’
I looked at my hands and answered, ‘I was without rings when my
consciousness returned.’
‘A pity!’ exclaimed the surgeon impatiently; ‘there might be the clue
we seek in a ring of yours. Have ye no jewellery?’
‘I have nothing but this purse,’ I answered, and I gave it to him.
‘English money at all events, captain,’ he cried, emptying the contents
into his hand. ‘But what does that tell? Merely that English money
circulates everywhere.’
The stewardess entered.
‘Mrs. Richards,’ said Captain Ladmore, ‘you will please prepare a
berth for this lady in the steerage. See that she is made perfectly
comfortable, and the conveniences which she stands in need of that the
ship can supply let her have.’
‘I do not know how to thank you,’ I said in a broken voice.
‘Not a word of thanks, if you please,’ he answered. ‘You have suffered
sadly, and for no inconsiderable part of your suffering is this ship
responsible. We must make you all the amends possible.’
He motioned to the stewardess who opened the door.
‘I’ll not worry you now with looking at your head and dressing
it,’ said Mr. McEwan; ‘take some rest first. I’ll call in upon you
by-and-by.’
We passed into the brilliant saloon. The sun was now high, and his
beams glittered gloriously upon the skylights, and were multiplied
in a hundred sparkling prisms in the mirrors, lamps, and globes of
fish. Through the windows of the skylight some of the sails of the
ship were visible, and they rose swelling and towering and of a
surf-like whiteness to the windy sky that lay in a hazy marble over
the mastheads. The stewards were stripping the tables of the breakfast
things, and at the forward end of the saloon stood a group of ladies
conversing, and looking through a window on to the decks beyond, where
a multitude of the emigrant or third-class passengers were assembled.
I held my head bowed, for I was ashamed to be seen. The stewardess took
me to her berth, and when I had entered it I sat down, and putting
my hands to my heart I rocked myself and tried to weep, for my heart
felt swollen as though it would burst, and my head felt full, and my
breathing was difficult; but the tears would not flow. Many hours of
anguish had I passed since consciousness had returned to me on board
the brig, but more exquisite than all those hours of anguish put
together was the agony my spirit underwent as I sat in the stewardess’s
berth rocking myself. No light! no light! Oh, I had hoped for some
faint illumination from the questions which had been asked me, from
the sentences which the captain and the surgeon had exchanged about
me. The blackness was as impenetrable as ever it had been. I groped
with my inward vision over the thick dark curtain, but no glimmer of
light crossed it, no fold stirred. The silence and the blackness were
of the tomb. It was as though I had returned to life to find myself
in a coffin, there to lie straining my eyes against the impenetrable
darkness, and there, in the grave, to lie hearkening to the awful hush
of death.
‘Come, cheer up, dear,’ said the stewardess, putting her hand upon my
shoulder. ‘Stay, I have something that will do you good,’ and going to
a shelf she took down a little decanter of cherry-brandy and gave me a
glassful.
‘They told me things that may be true, and I do not know whether they
are true or not,’ said I.
‘What did they say, dear?’
‘They said that I was young, and that my hair was black before I
lost my memory; and they said that I might be the only survivor of a
shipwreck, and that there was nothing--nothing--oh! _nothing_ to tell
where I came from, where my home was, what my name is----!
‘Now you must have patience, and you must keep up your courage,’ said
the stewardess. ‘Wait till you see poor Miss Lee. You will not think
that yours is the greatest or the only trouble in this world. _She_ is
certainly dying, but you will not die, I hope. You will get strong, and
then your memory will return, and you will go home, and the separation
will not be long, you will find. It is not like dying. There is no
return then,’ said she, glancing at the photograph of the little baby
on the woman’s knee; ‘and besides,’ she continued, looking at my hand,
‘whether you remember or not, you may be sure that you are not married,
and, therefore, have no husband or children wondering what has become
of you. You may, indeed, have a father and mother, and perhaps sisters,
and others like that, but separation from _them_ is not like separation
from husband and children. So, dear, think how much worse it might be,
and go on hoping for the best. And now I am going to prepare a berth
for you, and get a bath ready. There is an empty berth next door, and
you shall have it. And you shall also have what you sadly need, a
comforting change of linen.’
She then left me.
An hour later I was lying, greatly refreshed, in the berth which the
good-hearted Mrs. Richards had got ready for me. A warm salt-water
bath had taken all the aching out of my limbs. No restorative could
have proved so life-giving. It soothed me--Oh! the embrace and
enfoldment of the warm, green, sparkling brine was deliciously grateful
beyond all power of words after the long days which I had passed in my
clothes--in clothes which the rain had soaked through to the skin, and
which had dried upon me. When I had bathed, I replaced my underclothing
by some clean linen lent to me by the stewardess. And when, having
entered my new berth, I had brushed my hair and refreshed my face with
some lavender water which Mrs. Richards had placed with brushes and
other toilet articles upon a little table--when, having done this, I
got into my bunk, or sleeping-shelf, and found myself resting upon a
hair mattress, with a bolster and pillow of down for my head, I felt
as though I had been born into a new life, as though some base and
heavy burden of sordid physical pain and distress had been taken from
me. My mind, too, was resting. The inward weary wrestling had ceased
for a time. I lay watching the lines of golden sunlight rippling upon a
circle of bluish splendour cast by the large circular porthole upon the
polished chestnut-coloured bulkhead near the door, until my eyes closed
and I slumbered.