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.’